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The two paragraphs which come under the heading Comparison with DNA seem to be self-contradictory. The first states that “RNA is a single-stranded molecule in most of its biological roles”, while the second states that “most biologically active RNAs … are extensively base paired to form double stranded helices”. This is non-sense. 141.5.20.120 ( talk) 11:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The lead picture (part of a pre-mRNA) shows how a single-stranded RNA forms a double helix. Though the text shouldn't say "double stranded helices", will remove that word. Narayanese ( talk) 19:08, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

With recent emergence of research interest in the use of RNA for therapeutic purposes from academia, biotech and pharma alike, a joint effort is desirable to include a small introductory mention (one-line in the intro para) followed by a detailed description of this field

Nattu

Ribosomal RNA??

"exploit this property by" removed (anthromorphic - people exploit things, molecules do not)

", and so has fallen out of favour among complex organisms as the preferred genetic material" also removed - most organisms don't know what kinds of molecules they contain and couldn't desired to change them even if they knew.

>>>Should use "naturally selected" or "eliminated by natural selection" ?

It looks like we are quite pedant,isn't it? It's quite obvious that words like "exploit this property" referring to RNA molecules are just a convenient metaphor... Just have a look to *every* peer-reviewed scientific journal to find *thousands* of such metaphors.

When giving a scientific explanation, many times euphemisms are utilized to make things easier to understand. Going through an article and removing metaphors because it does not suit your idea of the english langauge is not improving the article, it is merely being a langauge snob.

"RNA transmits information from DNA to proteins" is a form of a Lies-To-Children It might not be a good idea to mention it in an encyclopedic article in exactly that form, even though it's good enough for a school textbook. Technically only mRNA does transmission. Other kinds of RNA may or may not be involved.

Kim Bruning 20:02, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've seen references as old as from 1976 to dsRNA, but despite fairly aggressive searching, I have not been able to convince myself of who discovered it, how they did so, and when. Did dsRNA discovery coincide with DNA discovery? Keesiewonder 22:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I read this article today and I found the following paragraph. I think someone is clearly yanking my chain here:

In the late 1990s and early 2000, there has been persistent evidence of more complex sex occurring in mammalian cells (and possibly others). This could point towards a more widespread use of dildos in biology, particularly in gene regulation. A particular class of dildos, micro dildo, has been found in many metazoans (from Caenorhabditis elegans to Homo sapiens) and clearly plays an important role in regulating other horny people.

Cuardin 12:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

That's called vandalism, feel free to revert it

Hi there. I wondered if the contributors to this page might have some input on this article. TimVickers 22:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I came to this article to find out what the relative amounts of the respective forms of RNA would be inside your average cell. The article doesn't even make any attempt to express this. I am going to be looking elsewhere, but if anyone has information handy and can add it into the articlebefore I do - that would be great.-- 138.77.2.130 04:29, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It depends on the type of cell, and on how you want to quantify the relative amounts. If you want to know on the basis of mass, I believe rRNA is the most abundant, however if you want to know molar amounts then it would likely be tRNA - also I haven't seen any numbers of the molar amounts of the more recently discovered small RNAs. Hichris 20:12, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I just removed something added about 4% of RNA being mRNA - something like this should probably be referenced and qualified - 4% by weight? 4% of the RNA molecules? Big difference! Hichris 21:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

mRNA makes up about 2% of the transcription output in a cell (see Mattick JS, 2001, EMBO Reports). It's hard to quantify non-coding RNAs because a significant percentage of them simply hasn't been categorized yet. I believe I saw some rough figures before, I'll try to dig up the article. -Lp 70.81.26.125 16:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

K-crash 16:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC) i wonder,why there must be 3 bases in either RNA and DNA?why not they exist as 4 bases/pair since they have 4 bases?what is the rule or evidence that shows RNA and DNA must be in 3 bases?

K-crash, do you mean why are codons made up of 3 bases? See the Genetic_Code article Hichris 19:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

The secondary structure section looks pretty thin currently. It would be good to have a figure showing an RNA helix, links to the stem-loop article. Describe covariation versus sequence conservation. Alexbateman 07:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe this article could do more to impress upon the reader the amazing diversity (and emerging importance) of RNA. Consider, for a moment, the following:

• Argonautes and Dicers and known be involved in RNAi-related gene-silencing events in many eukaryotes:
  • scnRNAs: ~28nt siRNAs are specifically expressed during conjugation.
• microRNAs
• endogenous siRNAs — can fall into different classes (based on their biogenesis and function) such as:
  • tasiRNAs (trans-acting short interfering RNAs)
  • natsiRNAs
  • heterochromatic siRNAs
• snRNAs
• snoRNAs
• rasiRNAs (repeat associated siRNA)
• piRNAs (discovered in 2006 and found to be abundant in developing sex cells. A male animal missing these would be infertile)
• XIST / Tsix (turns off the second X chromosome in females; see X-inactivation)
• PINC (pregnancy-induced non-coding RNA)
• RNAi (aka RNA interference)
• etc. -- Thorwald 01:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

On the issue of diversity, I don't think ncRNA should be at the same level as tRNA, mRNA, etc as it is now. It's either coding (mRNA) or non-coding (everything else). The list is also redundant (and in danger of becoming out of sync) with same list in the ncRNA page. -Lp 70.81.26.125 16:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The article is actually pretty close to meeting the Good article criteria, although there's still a couple of issues. I already fixed a couple of minor grammatical/spelling/MOS issues, but a few larger issues remain:

• The lead section is overall very good, but the sentence introducing mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA could be rewritten to be a bit better. Why not just state the names of these three types of RNA, since they are all pretty major, related, and certainly important to the concept of RNA. True, they're covered in detail later in the article, but they should be mentioned explicitly in the lead, too, which should be a good summary of the article.

• Combine the 'secondary structure' section into the 'chemical and stereochemical structure' section. In fact, I would just rename the main section to 'structure', and possibly include the secondary structure content as a subsection within it. Also, the current wording is a bit vague and ambiguous -- the title of the section is 'secondary structure', but the first sentence introducing the section goes on to refer to 'tertiary structure'. This should be cleared up. The section should also just discuss the basics of RNA secondary & tertiary structure, and not list external links for various software packages used to analyze this -- as it's written, the section looks mainly like an advertisement for these software packages (even if many of them are free). Some of these links might be moved to 'external links', but most of them can probably be safely removed from the article entirely.

• I would recommend moving the third paragraph under 'chemical and stereochemical structure' to the second, or before the paragraph talking about modified bases. I think we want to talk about the key aspects of RNA structure first, and the 3'-OH is one of these. Some modification in the writing should be done, though, because I can see why modified bases got put where it did, since we started talking about the bases, then go into modified bases, and then the 3'-OH. Maybe we should mention the ribose, then the phosphate, the 3'-OH, and then the bases, so that the modified bases paragraph can come in at the very end.

• The 'biological roles' section seems to start out by actually talking about various types of RNA, and then goes into some of the actual biological roles. And then, after three other sections, is a section entitled 'List of RNAs'. I think it would make sense to have two sections here; first, a section entitled 'types of RNA' (or simply 'types'). This should contain a short paragraph on the more important types of RNA, such as mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA, and then use the table in the current list section. Immediately after this section, put a section called 'biological roles', and discuss how these different types of RNA are used and what their function is. Both sections should be close together, because they are related.

• Change the title of 'history' to 'discovery'; I think this would be more descriptive of what is actually being discussed here, since it covers the discovery of RNA and the discovery of various types of RNA.

• The 'RNA world hypothesis' section is completely uncited, and very short. I actually don't think a main section is needed for this at all. Since there's another article on this anyway, I'd write a good sentence or two, with a citation, and put it into possibly the 'history'/'discovery' section, or maybe 'biological roles'. The sentence itself can link to the RNA world hypothesis article, so no 'see also' link is necessary.

• The 'therapeutic RNA' section could be written better. First, the term 'therapeutic RNA', should itself be used in the section itself, instead of just in the section title, if you're defining it. I'm not sure it should go in its own main section; it might fit better under the history/discovery section, discussing future avenues of research.

• It might be worth mentioning that RNA is also a potential drug target. There are existing drugs that actually target some forms of RNA, such as the aminoglycoside antibiotics, among others. While this is probably worth mentioning, it's less important for [{WP:GA|GA status]]. It would be almost a must for FA status, though.

I think that should cover the key issues with the article. I think once these are fixed, the article can be promoted to GA status. I'll put this on hold at WP:GAN until 1/19/2007, and review it again. Cheers! Dr. Cash ( talk) 04:56, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! They look like good suggestions, so I've follow them and changed the article (save for adding ribosome inhibitors). Narayanese ( talk) 16:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

The article looks just about ready for GA. One minor issue, though. In the 'types of RNA' section, I think it would be good to have subsections covering transfer RNA & ribosomal RNA as well, preferably right after the subsection on mRNA. All three of these (mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA) are major types of RNA, and I think a short subsection describing them is necessary here, rather than just relying on the list. The list is fine for some of the other RNA types, though, since they're not quite as major.

Other than that, the article looks great! I think it can be promoted once this issue is fixed. Cheers! Dr. Cash ( talk) 19:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather not explain them in the types section, that section isn't good for context, and you saw that it looked a little messy when the biological roles section (where both tRNA and rRNA are explained) was crammed in under non-coding RNA. And I sure wouldn't list them outside of non-coding RNA! That would give the impression they aren't from RNA genes. But I can move more from the RNA types section to biological roles to make the types section even more of an overview, with all the details in the biological roles section. Narayanese ( talk) 22:05, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok, after re-reading the section, it looks fine as-is. I guess I was kind expecting tRNA and rRNA to have their own sections, but I agree with their simple listing under 'non-coding RNAs', now that I correctly see what you've done. Good work! Article promoted. Dr. Cash ( talk) 22:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I'll go ahead with moving most of the the mRNA section to translation and a bit of the dsRNA section to gene regulation, since I guess one would expect tRNA and rRNA to follow directly after mRNA in the text.

Narayanese ( talk) 23:03, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

(done) Narayanese ( talk) 00:06, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Just wondering why there has been absolutely no mention of these. They are required for an RNA molecule to leave the nucleus. Without them they are degraded by various enzymes in the cytoplasm. A 5' Cap is added almost as soon as transcription begins!! TheTrojanHought ( talk) 11:22, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

• Just add it in and see what happens. People might argue that it is well-covered at Messenger RNA‎, but a brief mention wouldn't hurt, since this is where people would expect to at least to be able to click on 5' cap and polyadenylation. BlownSugar ( talk) 12:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
• It could be worth a mention under synthesis, even though only RNAs transcribed by RNA polymerase II get the cap and tail. I don't think the export should be mentioned, it is specific to eukaryotic messenger RNA, e.g. pri-miRNA has its cap and tail removed before being exported. Narayanese ( talk) 12:11, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

To avoid repetition with the ncRNA article I propose that *we* make a dedicated 'List of RNAs' article and link to it from the 'List of RNAs' and 'Types of non-coding RNAs' sections of the RNA and ncRNA articles. --Ppgardne 13:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

You mean like moving the List of RNAs section to its own article? Or transclude (probably less good)? You are right about it being too much repetition. The bits about large non-coding RNAs in the ncRNA article could be moved to its own article as well and added to the list as a link. Narayanese ( talk) 20:24, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't like File:NA-comparedto-DNA thymineAndUracilCorrected.png. The helical structure of RNA in the picture has nothing to do with reality, and I saw another Wikipedia article where an editor had assumed that RNA forms a single-sranded helix based on this picture... the result of its misleading nature. There are already the links to the purines and pyrimidines in the article for people to look at. Narayanese ( talk) 01:58, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree, maybe an image from Heroes, the NBC show. -- 203.171.199.105 ( talk) 09:13, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe the structure picture is incorrect. The bonds between the phosphate and the ribose are on the wrong oxygens of the phosophate. There is also the fact that RNA exists in double stranded form in viruses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.196.144.88 ( talk) 03:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

No, the depiction of the phosphodiester bonds is accurate. Phosphate has a tetrahedral geometry, so any two of its oxygens (such as the two involved in these bonds) are adjacent to each other. When flattened into two dimensions, this looks just like the structure picture on this page. 97.113.147.245 ( talk) 17:33, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Hello, at least one company to my knowledge makes a multivitamin/supplement type product containing between 10 and 150mg of RNA per day. Nothing in the article at all about this yet it reached good article status. 76.10.164.191 ( talk) 10:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Given that the dietary supplement industry is largely unregulated this hardly seems noteworthy. Is there any published evidence that this supplement has any measurable effect over a control such as a mouthful of any animal or vegetable material (which also contains plenty of RNA)? My quick pubmed search turned up nothing.-- Paul ( talk) 12:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to advertise the supplement website unless asked for what it is, but when you click the ingredient RNA it tells you a bit about it, followed by the following: http://freetexthost.com/agz34isryy I'm not exactly sure what to do with this but I see some Pubmed, etc in there. Do veggies literally have hundreds of milligrams of RNA? That derails the requirement in a supplement.. I'd definitely like this outed and more written about it whether it's positive or just info on the use and uselessness in a supplement. 76.10.164.191 ( talk) 22:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, all foods contain lots of RNA, but that doesn't matter, as you synthesize your own, so it's not necessary to consume it. I don't see much research on this, probably because it's considered obvious that you don't need it. Here's one undergraduate research paper that found that it didn't help in a specific case [ [1]].

The digestive system secretes ribonuclease, so all you get out of dietary RNA is a bunch of nucleotides which your body could synthesize on its own. If intact foreign RNA did get into a cell, it would be more likely to wreak havoc than be of benefit. PubMed makes it easy to add lots of authoritative-looking references to claims, but they only count if you follow up the cited articles to see whether they really say anything relevant to the claims being made. 96.54.32.44 ( talk) 19:34, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

"Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is one of the three major macromolecules (along with DNA and proteins) that are essential for all known forms of life." What about polysaccharides and lipids? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.203.4.38 ( talk) 03:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"New research links RNA modification with obesity" -- Jo3sampl ( talk) 21:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking all over the internet to find a model of RNA for my Molecules app on my Mac ( http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/molecules/id444014972?mt=12), but I can't find one anywhere. Could someone help me find on please? Mchcopl ( talk) 14:28, 1 May 2012 (UTC)!

       The complementary base to adenine in DNA is thymine, whereas in 
       RNA, it is uracil, which is an unmethylated form of thymine.[4]

I have doubts about that. Normally RNA is single stranded, and sometimes it doesn't contains uracil (ebola virus). Does all dsRNA virus contains uracil ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.222.134.138 ( talk) 17:45, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

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Sourcechecked. SciAm article appears to be behind a paywall, but I don't think that counts as an archive failure.  —jmcgnh ^{(talk) (contribs)} 14:36, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't like the recently added figure. The main difference between RNA and DNA are the hydroxyl groups on RNA. The figure does not show them and implies the only differences are uracil <-> thymine, and that RNA is single-stranded, which is not universally true. Rotavirus like many other viruses has a genome of double-stranded RNA. True, it's a pretty picture, but it's wrong. Graham Colm ( talk) 19:19, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi GrahamColm! Thanks for the information. The pictures has already been removed by Narayanese. Best wishes, -- Sponk ( talk) 04:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

The main difference of RNA and DNA is that, RNA is single stand while DNA is double stand or double helix structure and it contains hydrogen bonding between them . RNA stands for ribo nucleic acid while DNA stands for deoxyribo nucleic acid, I other words RNA contain ribose sugar while DNA contain deoxyribo sugar. Shoaib Afzal Khan ( talk) 09:21, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

@ Shoaib Afzal Khan: That's a six-year-old discussion you are responding to. Are you wanting to make an edit to the article?  —jmcgnh ^{(talk) (contribs)} 14:39, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

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This article currently does not mention the meaning of ssRNA even though ssRNA redirects to it. I propose to add a brief description that "ssRNA" stands for single-stranded RNA. Somerandomuser ( talk) 22:52, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

"ssRNA" stands for "single-stranded RNA" Somerandomuser ( talk) 03:25, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

I am in a Fellows class, just learning Wikipedia editing. I'm a retired professor with a Yale PhD in genetics and I've published a text on Molecular Genetics. I think that there are several types of regulatory RNA now known that deserve a clearer exposition of their characteristics. I've had conversation with some others about a disambiguation page to let people who enter "Regulatory RNA" get a choice and not just be sent to RNA interference. It is the only regulatory RNA system recognized with a Nobel prize to date, but there are also long noncoding RNAs like Xist and enhancer RNAs as well as riboswitches, CRISPR, and small bacterial RNAs. I have taken a copy of this section into my sandbox to work on. Ideas, comments welcome. LLMHoopes ( talk) 03:51, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

I am a Fellow at Weki ed and I first proposed to add a page on Regulatory RNA. It was suggested that I make a disambiguation page instead but when I tried that it was not accepted. So now I'm contributing a section for the RNA article on the subject. I want it to be possible for people to find the types of regulatory RNA besides just interference by miRNA and then go to the articles on them to read more. Open to suggestions. LLMHoopes ( talk) 01:44, 12 September 2018 (UTC)