What is RNA synthesis?

1 Answer
Jul 16, 2014

RNA synthesis (also known as transcription) is the production of an RNA molecule from the nucleotides adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), or uracil (U).

The nucleotides are joined together by the enzyme RNA Polymerase (shown in green below). The sequence of nucleotides is determined by complementary base-pairing of the RNA nucleotides to a single-stranded DNA template.

The RNA molecule may function as messenger RNA (mRNA) in protein synthesis, or may be one of the other many other forms of RNA (tRNA, rRNA, miRNA, etc).

RNA Synthesis from nucleotides A)