holymoleculesbatman: DNA and RNA have similar structures in…

This has been reposted from our lab tumblelog

holymoleculesbatman:

DNA and RNA have similar structures in that each has a sugar-phosphate backbone with one organic base bound to each sugar. However, there are four differences between RNA and DNA:

1. The sugar in RNA is ribose, not deoxyribose
2. RNA uses uracil instead of thymine. The common bases in RNA are adenine, uracil, guanine, and cytosine.
3. RNA is much smaller than DNA. The molecules of RNA range in molar mass between 20,000 and 40,000 g/mol instead of as much as 10⁹ g/mol.
4. RNA is usually single-stranded, not double-stranded

Images taken from wikipedia.org

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