I'm not a chemist—I'm an artist and I occasionally write. But I'm starting to get more and more interested in xeno/speculative biology. When it comes to these things I'm pretty much just looking at stuff dumbfounded and trying to understand it. So every now and then I would like some advice from people who are much more galaxy brained than me.
My latest strange fixation is nucleic acids. I'm researching stuff for a personal sheet with alternative biochemistry things, and I sort of noticed that most backbone sugars I see being used are monosaccharides like threose, hexitol, altritol, and the naturally-occurring ribose and deoxyribose. So I've been kind of making the safe assumption that any monosaccharide can fill the role. I have the feeling that I'm very wrong. But I really wanted to know before assuming.
Thank you so much in advance <3