An Overview of Nucleotide Metabolism
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Macromolecular content of cells
The life of any organism is dependent upon nucleotides, which are the basic building blocks of both deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). All cells within a given organism, regardless of their size, will have a fixed amount of DNA residing within them.
Although the DNA content is not dictated by the size of a cell, the concentration of other cellular components, particularly proteins, will typically occupy approximately 16% of the total volume of most mammalian cells. The volume of any given mammalian cell can vary greatly, thereby causing the macromolecular content, with the exception of DNA, of one cell type to potentially vary over a factor of 10-fold or more as compared to that of another cell type.