Ribonucleic Acid or RNA is a type of nucleic acid found in all living organisms.
It is coiled and single-stranded made up of sugar, nitrogen base, and phosphate group linked by phosphodiester bonds.
It was the main genetic content when life was new on the planet and later a more developed and stable DNA took its place.
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic Acid or DNA is the main genetic material of all living organisms.
It is a double-helical coiled structure that is comparatively more stable than its RNA counterpart.
It has four nitrogen bases namely adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.
All the genetic information of an organism is stored in the DNA.
RNA usually does not turn into DNA in normal biochemical processes.
DNA evolved from RNA million years ago when the world was dominated by RNA and RNA-based proteins.
Although it is much more stable than RNA, all the proteins in each and every biological system are synthesized through an RNA transcribe.
RNA can be synthesized into DNA by the enzyme reverse transcriptase in the process called reverse transcription.
This enzyme uses RNA as a template and synthesizes DNA from it.
This occurs only during specific needs of the organism, but viruses are the entity that uses reverse transcription as an effective method for infection.
