RNA

Ribonucleic Acid. RNAs are the links in the chain which form the single strands that copy the code from cellular DNA. While DNA contains all the instructions for all the proteins of a living organism or cell, the RNA chain is the manufacturing instruction for one protein. Single strands of messenger RNA are made by transcribing the DNA links which code for that one protein which are then processed by ribosomes. Transfer RNA strands carrying one specific amino acid have a specifically ordered triplet of RNAs that match RNA triplets in the messenger RNA. Both DNA and RNA have three of their four specific nucleic acids in common: adenosine, cytosine, and guanine. The fourth nucleic acid in DNA is thymine and in RNA is uracil. For all these reasons, messenger RNA (mRNA) cannot be used by cells to replace DNA. DNA contains the master codes for all proteins while RNA only contains the code for one protein.