What is the difference between rna and dna structures

RNA can be thought of like a copy of a segment of DNA that you can throw away once it's not needed anymore. Sometimes it is even a copy of one specific gene. Neat, huh? There are four main types in organisms: carbohydrates , proteins, lipids , and nucleic acids. DNA vs. Biology Molecular Genetic Code. Explanations 5 Gabi Slizewska.

Image source: By Gabi Slizewska. Functions: DNA deoxyribonucleic acid and RNA ribonucleic acid are very similar molecules that serve very different functions. The differences start to show up when we take a closer look at their structures.

Related Lessons. View All Related Lessons. Sarah Morgan. Image source: By Sarah Morgan. This Venn diagram can help remind you. Deena Hauze. Samantha Broders. This picture shows how the two strands of DNA bond with each other. Bases pair off together in a double helix structure, these pairs being A and T, and C and G. RNA molecules, by comparison, are much shorter 3. Eukaryotic cells, including all animal and plant cells, house the great majority of their DNA in the nucleus, where it exists in a tightly compressed form, called a chromosome 4.

This squeezed format means the DNA can be easily stored and transferred. In addition to nuclear DNA, some DNA is present in energy-producing mitochondria, small organelles found free-floating in the cytoplasm, the area of the cell outside the nucleus. The three types of RNA are found in different locations.

If it receives the correct signal from the ribosome, it will then hunt down amino acid subunits in the cytoplasm and bring them to the ribosome to be built into proteins 5. Ribosomes are formed in an area of the nucleus called the nucleolus, before being exported to the cytoplasm, where some ribosomes float freely. Other cytoplasmic ribosomes are bound to the endoplasmic reticulum, a membranous structure that helps process proteins and export them from the cell 5.

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The EMBO journal. Long noncoding RNAs with enhancer-like function in human cells. Chapter 8: Post-transcriptional Gene Control. In: Freeman W, editor. Molecular Cell Biology. San Francisco; BACK to learn! RNA 2. Each of these basic carbon-nitrogen rings has different functional groups attached to it. In molecular biology shorthand, the nitrogenous bases are simply known by their symbols A, T, G, C, and U.

The difference between the sugars is the presence of the hydroxyl group on the second carbon of the ribose and hydrogen on the second carbon of the deoxyribose. The phosphodiester linkage is not formed by simple dehydration reaction like the other linkages connecting monomers in macromolecules: its formation involves the removal of two phosphate groups. A polynucleotide may have thousands of such phosphodiester linkages.

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