Question

What are three types of RNAs?

Answer 1

RNA or Ribonucleic acid is found predominantly in cytoplasm and is mostly single stranded. There are three types of RNA:

1. Messenger RNA or mRNA: mRNA is single stranded without any base pairing. Structural components of mRNA include a CAP at 5' end, non coding region 1, initiation codon AUG, coding region, termination codon, non coding region 2 and poly-A sequence at 3' end. mRNA is translated into proteins by ribosomes.

2. Ribosomal RNA or rRNA: rRNA is the basic constituent of ribosomes and formed from the nucleolar organising region of chromosomes in eukaryotes. It plays structural and catalytic role during translation of mRNA into proteins.

3. Transfer RNA or tRNA: tRNA accounts for only 0.025% of the total DNA content. The primary structure of tRNA is considered as a clover leaf model. The function of tRNA is to align the required amino acid according to the nucleotides sequence of mRNA.