Phosphodiester bond

In chemistry, a phosphodiester bond occurs when exactly two of the hydroxyl groups (−OH) in phosphoric acid react with hydroxyl groups on other molecules to form two ester bonds. The "bond" involves this linkage C−O−PO−2O−C. Discussion of phosphodiesters is dominated by their prevalence in DNA and RNA, but phosphodiesters occur in other biomolecules, e.g. acyl carrier proteins, phospholipids and the cyclic forms of GMP and AMP (cGMP and cAMP).