What is what kind of sugar is found in a nucleotide?

In a nucleotide, the sugar component is generally a pentose sugar, meaning it has five carbon atoms. The most common pentose sugar found in nucleotides is ribose, which is present in RNA (Ribonucleic acid). In DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid), the sugar component is deoxyribose, which is very similar to ribose but lacks one oxygen atom.

The sugar in a nucleotide is typically connected to a nitrogenous base and a phosphate group. The nitrogenous base can be adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine (in DNA), or uracil (in RNA). These bases, combined with the sugar and phosphate groups, form the basic building blocks of nucleic acids.