Science Fundamentals: RNA

The Science Fundamental Series is designed to give quick, brief introductions to fundamental concepts in science. Hopefully these quick explanations of science terms and processes are helpful, and are part of the groundwork for your scientific literacy. If there are topics that you would like me to cover, please let me know in the comments. I have a Ph.D. in microbiology/biochemistry, but I am happy to do some digging into topics that I don’t deal with every day.

This Science Fundamental is on RNA. It is less well known than the related molecule DNA, but just as important, and it may have even been the precursor to DNA.

RNA or ribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid similar in structure to DNA. RNA is usually single-stranded, as opposed to the double-stranded DNA structure, however, the single-stranded RNA often folds in on itself to mimic the double-stranded nature of DNA. In addition, RNA has alternating phosphate groups and ribose rather than the deoxyribose in DNA. These ribose sugars are attached to one of the four bases: Adenine, Uracil, Cytosine, and Guanine. Notice that the DNA base Thymidine was replaced with the RNA base Uracil, which is just an unmethylated form of thymidine.

Messenger RNA (mRNA)

One of the main functions of RNA is to carry messages from the DNA in the genome to the ribosome (protein factories) so…