Most people have heard of RNA and DNA before, but many aren’t sure what they do. A smaller amount may know that DNA is important—they’ve heard of it on crime shows and what not. But a surprising amount of people have simply never heard of RNA before.

This is too bad considering how important RNA is. RNA stands for Ribonucleic acid. It’s in charge of a number of things in our body including coding, decoding, expressing and regulating our genes. So if you think about it, without RNA, our survival wouldn’t be possible. We wouldn’t be able to inherit important genes from our parents either.

RNA synthesis is an extremely important biological function. Again, without this function, we wouldn’t exist. RNA would exist solely on its own without ever working with DNA and creating life.

Nowadays, we’ve actually learned how to force RNA synthesis in a lab. Methods that include antisense oligonucleotides, binding and probes all work together to force RNA to synthesize.

The results are far reaching and we still haven’t come to terms with their full effects. For example, we can now make artificial nucleotides for scientists to experiment on. Of course, these scientists could even combine these with strands of DNA and begin creating life.

While there is still much we can learn from and do with RNA, the above is a good primer on understanding how important the building block is.

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Article submitted by The Midland Certified Reagent Company. The company’s website is an invaluable resource for anything related to DNA synthesis.