eli5 the difference between monocistronic and polycistronic

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Like the title says, im having trouble visualizing what it means when it says eukaryotic mRNA is monocistronic and prokaryotic mRNA is polycistronic. Please help.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Monocistronic means there is a single protein encoded on that piece of DNA. This is how eukaryotes do translation, so there will be a cap as well as a poly-A tail on the mRNA.

Polycistronic means multiple proteins are encoded within the same piece of mRNA, and is common with prokaryotic translation. This means there are multiple start and stop codons on the same piece of mRNA, each relating to one of the proteins encoded.

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