What is it about RNA that won’t create a double strand?

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Many, many years ago, I was taking a bio course in college, we were learning about DNA and RNA, and I noticed that RNA never creates a double strand, and was always curious. What is it that is chemically or otherwise different that prevents RNA from creating a double strand like its counterpart DNA? I asked the professor at the time, but never was given an answer other than IDK.

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It absolutely will, given the chance.

This is the case in many viruses that have doublestranded RNA as their genome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-stranded_RNA_viruses

Additionally, it also sort of happens in humans. It’s not exactly a double-strand but complementary bases can cause the RNA to fold into non-linear shapes. This is integral for the function of certain RNAs, most notably tRNA, the things that match up the codons on mRNA with the associated aminoacid during translation:

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/transfer-rna-trna-108126017.jpg

So, the actual reason that we don’t have actual doublestrands in humans is very simple: Our cells simply only make one strand at a time as that suffices for what we need.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It has an extra oxygen atom so it cants bond to other strands. Hence DE-Oxy Ribo nucleic acid (DNA)