Talk:RNA

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the RNA article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Add new text under old text. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Start a new topic Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 3 months

	RNA has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 18, 2008 Good article nominee Listed

This  level-3 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Molecular Biology: Genetics / MCB This article is within the scope of WikiProject Molecular Biology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of molecular biology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Molecular BiologyWikipedia:WikiProject Molecular BiologyTemplate:WikiProject Molecular BiologyMolecular Biology ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by the Genetics task force (assessed as Top-importance). This article is supported by the Molecular and Cell Biology task force (assessed as Top-importance). Polymers (inactive) This article is within the scope of WikiProject Polymers, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.PolymersWikipedia:WikiProject PolymersTemplate:WikiProject PolymersPolymers

This article was the MCB Collaboration of the Month for the month of May 2007. For more details, see the MCB Collaboration of the Month history.

I wanted sdto look up RNA in the wikipedia thinking that it would be able to give me a good starting point to understanding it. However, what I got was what's posted which tells me absolutely nothing as a newbie to genetics. Could someone please lay some ground rules about this kind of thing. It seems to me that since you can put lots of links in the definition of an entry, the entry loses it's coherence for someone like me. I think a good rule for wikipedia entries is that there should only be 3 links allowed in the opening general description paragraph of an article.

basically DNA the instructions for are organisms is found in the nucleus. however it can not leave the nucleus so when "instructions" need to be send out, part of the DNA is unraveled and copied. dna is made of four base pairs. i shall use just the letters A, T, C ang G. amazing yes that all life is described in changing patterns of these. A always pairs with T and C with G. because DNA is two strands. when copying dna the two strands are unraveled and one side is copied because if know one side you know the other. RNA bases (the same as DNA bases except use U instead of T) go into the nucleus and bind to the complimentary DNA bases. They then polymerise into the RNA strand. This is transcription. If it is a mRNA then it is later translated into protein.

that is the most basic explaination without getting into virii and other things.

FWIW - (For being aware only of newly published relevant studies - not necessarily to incorporate into the main article) - On 8 July 2022, astronomers reported the discovery of massive amounts of prebiotic molecules, including for RNA, in the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy.^[1][2] - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 13:09, 10 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Drbogdan (talk) 13:09, 10 July 2022 (UTC)Reply

Just looking superficially at the images in the article, one can think that RNA is a (mostly) double stranded molecule. however, that is not true as far I know. I think at least, first image should be a single stranded RNA image. Araz Zeyniyev (talk) 02:41, 2 January 2023 (UTC)Reply

The first sentence leans on very specialized terms.

Abbreviated: RNA is essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes.

In the first sentence we should strive to convey the essentials in a way that many can understand. Here is a trial:

RNA is essential for all biological functions, either by performing that function itself (Non-coding RNA) or by forming a template for production of proteins (messenger RNA). Ettrig (talk) 08:00, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

Here is a good introductory picture for RNA. The site says that it is public domain. Ettrig (talk) 08:55, 5 July 2023 (UTC)Reply

The article falsely claims that "It has become widely accepted in science that early in the history of life on Earth ... an "RNA world" existed..." This is absolutely false! The "RNA-world" scenario is one of several. I guess you could argue it is "widely regarded as most likely" but it CERTAINLY ISN'T "ACCEPTED" as being the case by anyone who considers themself a objective scientist. Also, in the next section, it is claimed that each nucleotide contains a ribose sugar. No, they don't. A ribose sugar, BY DEFINITION, has an oxygen at the 1' carbon. Full stop. What it does have is a ribose sugar derivative. (The 3',5' phosphate ester linkages are more trivially modifications of the canonical hydroxyls at those positions.) It is true that the modified ribose is most often claimed to be a sugar but it is not: it is (arguably) a sugar derivative. (It's my understanding that the ribose unit is indeed derived (metabolically) from ribose sugar, but I've not looked into that claim. My point being that this article is unnecessarily sloppy and inaccurate.~2026-92463-4 (talk) 18:07, 8 May 2026 (UTC)Reply

was reading this recently and also had a reaction to the sentence, "widely accepted *in science*". What a strange thing to say. You don't need to specify science if it's widely accepted. Feels akin to when clickbait headline media talks about mysterious "scientists have proved this thing". If it is the leading theory or one of the leading hypotheses, or it is indeed widely accepted, we don't need to say "in science". I'm not particularly concerned with the opinions of non-scientific groups on things that have been discovered through scientific methods, such as RNA. Shriftkey (talk) 02:03, 26 May 2026 (UTC)Reply