Re: How does what you eat effect the nucleic acids in your body?

Great questions!  

First of all remember that the things you eat were all living at one time.  
And since they were living things, composed of cells, they must have their 
own DNA.  So when you eat anything, you're eating it's DNA too.  THIS IS NOT 
SOMETHING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT THOUGH!  What happens is that the DNA gets 
broken down into single nucleotides in your digestive tract.  This is just 
like proteins being broken down into amino acids.  There are cells in your 
intestine that can take up these free nucleic acids, and pass them into the 
blood stream where other cells will take them up, and use the nucleotides to 
make new DNA.  The other thing that your body can do is to make its own 
nucleotides from scratch, using the sugar ribose, phosphate, and the amino 
acid aspartate and other small molecules to make the bases.  Making nucleic 
acids requires specific enzymes in your cells.

The answer to your question about foods moms eat while pregnant, is yes.  
Growing fetuses get all of their nutrients from the moms...either in the 
form of already made nucleic acids, or the building blocks to make them from 
scratch. 

The other thing to think about in terms of eating, is that there are 
specific ways to damage your DNA.  One non-food example of this is UV-damage 
to DNA, like from the sun.  In terms of nutrients which can damage DNA, 
there are some very common nutrients which the body absolutely needs, but 
having too much of them can cause damage to DNA.  Some of these include 
iron, and vitamins E and A.  DON'T BE ALARMED BY THIS, AND BY ALL MEANS 
DON'T STOP EATING THINGS WHICH ARE GOOD SOURCES OF IRON AND VITAMINS, 
because your body really does need them to do good things.

A couple websites I found useful in answering this question are: 

http://search.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=118192&sctn=12

This talks a lot about the organic chemistry of making nucleotides, and 
might be a little hard to understand.

 http://vector.cshl.org/dnaftb/
Is an interesting site about all kinds of aspects of DNA, especially 
genetics of DNA and stuff.

If my answers aren't clear, ask more questions!

Good luck with your science class!

-Sarah