• Question: What is the difference between DNA and RNA?

    Asked by anon-256604 on 9 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Craig Duffy

      Craig Duffy answered on 9 Jun 2020:

      Hi Polina,

      That’s a really good question as DNA and RNA are very similar to each other but do very different things. Chemically the main difference is that the sugar molecule used in DNA has one less oxygen atom than RNA.

      The big difference between DNA and RNA though is what cells use them for. DNA is mostly used to store information in the form of the genome and (almost) every cell has a complete copy of it. RNA is mostly used to copy that information and take it to other parts of the cell where it can be used like a set of instructions to make things like proteins.

      In some ways your school library is like a genome and each book in it is like DNA, storing all the information. When you go in to the library you copy the information you need (which is what RNA does) and then take it back to class or where you need to use it.

      Hope that helps.

    • Photo: Alena Pance

      Alena Pance answered on 10 Jun 2020:

      Hi Polina, RNA is a nucleotide molecule. Like DNa, it is formed of nucleotides and it encodes the ‘manual of life’. DNA is organised in a double strand forming a helix and contains all the information to make cells and give them their function. RNA on the other hand is a single strand and though it can encode the whole genome of certain viruses, generally it is more a messenger. Mainly, because the DNA is enormous and unique in the cell, it cannot travel out of the nucleus of the cell, where all the machinery to make proteins is. So what happens is that a gene or coding part of the genome is transcribed into a molecule of RNA, which leaves the nucleus to go to the cytoplasm where it gives the information to make proteins.

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