Question

What is the plus strand and minus strand in RNA?

Answer 1

Ribonucleic acid or RNA is a nucleic acid which is made up of a chain of nucleotides but unlike DNA it is found in nature as a single strand that is folded onto itself rather than double stranded form seen in DNA.

Complete answer-
RNA are of many different types and each of them carries out different functions. The major types of RNA include messenger RNA or mRNA is used to convey genetic information, transfer RNA or tRNA which delivers amino acids to ribosomes and thus is important in protein synthesis and ribosomal RNA or rRNA which links the amino acids together during protein synthesis and thus leads to the formation of the final polypeptide. RNA in humans and most higher organisms help in the synthesis of proteins by transcription but the original genetic material of these organisms are DNA but there are certain prokaryotes and viruses that have RNA as their genetic material. In the case of viruses, the genome can be categorized as plus strand or positive sense and minus strand or negative sense. The plus strand is the RNA sequence that can be directly translated to proteins and thus serves as the mRNA whereas the minus strand is complementary to the mRNA and it must be converted into the plus strand for the synthesis of proteins.

Note-
RNA not only plays an important role in protein synthesis but also has other important roles such as catalysing biological reactions within cells, sensing and communicating responses to cellular signals and also controlling gene expression.