e, Thymine, Cytosine and they must be paired very specifically. Only Adenine with Thymine (A-T) and Guanine with Cytosine (G-C).Genetic information would be rendered useless if the stored information did not have a way of reaching the desired focal area. Since protein synthesis occurs in the cytoplasm and the DNA must remain in the nucleus, a way of transporting the code is essential. This comes in the form of messenger ribonucleic acid or m-RNA. Since the information on the DNA must stay the same on the m-RNA, the two have to be very similar. There are three major differences between RNA and DNA. RNA is only a single strand. The five-carbon sugar of RNA is ribose opposed to deoxyribose and in RNA the pyrimidine uracil replaces DNA's pyrimidine thymine. Since RNA is produced from DNA, the nucleotides of RNA can hold the same information as the nucleotides of DNA because the code for amino acids is centered around the RNA structure.The process in which m-RNA is synthesized is called transcription. This process is similar to DNA replication in the way that for transcription to occur, the double helix DNA must be unwound as in DNA replication. The major difference between transcription and replication is that in transcription only one of the strands is used as a template and only one m-RNA strand is produced. Transcription can be broken up into three parts in order to be understood. These steps are initiation, elongation and termination. Initiation of transcription is how the transcription begins. The enzyme responsible for m-RNA synthesis is called RNA polymerase 2. The RNA polymerase knows where to begin transcription because it is coded into the DNA. Termination of transcription represents how the process stops. Transcription is stopped by certain sequences coded into the DNA template. These sequences are called terminators. At the terminator sequence, RNA polymerase 2 stops or pauses, causing the transcription to be c...
