Which is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic information to regulate the development and functioning of living organisms and is the main component of chromosomes?

Correct option is D

The correct answer is (D) DNA

Explanation:
• Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms.
• It is a long molecule that contains our unique genetic code, acting like a blueprint or recipe for building all the proteins needed for the body to function.
• DNA is located primarily in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount can also be found in the mitochondria (mitochondrial DNA).
• The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T).
• DNA molecules are packaged into thread-like structures called chromosomes, which are visible during cell division.

Information Booster:
• James Watson and Francis Crick, with the help of Rosalind Franklin's data, discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953.
• DNA replication is the process by which DNA makes a copy of itself during cell division.
• The human genome contains approximately 3 billion base pairs of DNA.

Additional Knowledge:
• Protein (Option A): Large, complex molecules that play many critical roles in the body, synthesized based on the instructions from DNA.
• Starch (Option B): A polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units, used by plants as an energy storage molecule.
• RNA (Option C): Ribonucleic Acid is primarily involved in protein synthesis and sometimes serves as the genetic material in some viruses (e.g., Retroviruses).