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Common changes in nucleotide analogues. Nucleic acid analogues are used in molecular biology for several purposes: Investigation of possible scenarios of the origin of life: By testing different analogs, researchers try to answer the question of whether life's use of DNA and RNA was selected over time due to its advantages, or if they were chosen by arbitrary chance; [3]
Double-stranded RNA forms an A-type helical structure, unlike the common B-type conformation taken by double-stranded DNA molecules. The secondary structure of RNA consists of a single polynucleotide. Base pairing in RNA occurs when RNA folds between complementarity regions. Both single- and double-stranded regions are often found in RNA molecules.
RNA is a very similar molecule to DNA, with only two significant chemical differences (the backbone of RNA uses ribose instead of deoxyribose and its nucleobases include uracil instead of thymine). The overall structure of RNA and DNA are immensely similar—one strand of DNA and one of RNA can bind to form a double helical structure.
RNA-dependent DNA polymerases are a specialized class of polymerases that copy the sequence of an RNA strand into DNA. They include reverse transcriptase , which is a viral enzyme involved in the infection of cells by retroviruses , and telomerase , which is required for the replication of telomeres.
All living cells contain both DNA and RNA (except some cells such as mature red blood cells), while viruses contain either DNA or RNA, but usually not both. [15] The basic component of biological nucleic acids is the nucleotide, each of which contains a pentose sugar (ribose or deoxyribose), a phosphate group, and a nucleobase. [16]
The chemical structure of RNA is very similar to that of DNA, but differs in three primary ways: Unlike double-stranded DNA, RNA is usually a single-stranded molecule (ssRNA) [4] in many of its biological roles and consists of much shorter chains of nucleotides. [5]
The expression of genes encoded in DNA begins by transcribing the gene into RNA, a second type of nucleic acid that is very similar to DNA, but whose monomers contain the sugar ribose rather than deoxyribose. RNA also contains the base uracil in place of thymine. RNA molecules are less stable than DNA and are typically single-stranded.
Some segments of DNA are transcribed into RNA molecules that can encode proteins, called messenger RNA (mRNA). Other segments of DNA are transcribed into RNA molecules called non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Both DNA and RNA are nucleic acids, which use base pairs of nucleotides as a complementary language. During transcription, a DNA sequence is read ...