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In 1944, Oswald Avery demonstrated that DNA is the hereditary material.  Most scientists didn't believe his results.  They thought DNA was a "stupid substance".

RNA SYNTHESIS:
For Parents & Teachers

    "HOWDY, PARTNER!!!  How ya doin'?   Glad ya mosied over to my part of the corral!  I'm RayNA!  Maybe ya heard of me!  Most people have, ya know!  If ya stick by me, I'll show ya how DNA is used to create proteins. 

I, by the way, play a highly significant role in that process.  Those Genes and those proteins think they're such hot stuff!  They couldn't get along without me, I tell ya!

     "What's that?  What am I?   Well, I'm RNA, don't ya know!  RNA is like DNA, but we're smaller and more mobile.  Need to be mobile, don't ya know.  Look close at my arm and you'll see that I'm made of nucleotides like Gene and the rest of the DNA is.  But my nucleotides are slightly different.

     "My nucleotides have an extra oxygen atom, don't ya know.   I have A (adenine), C (cytosine), and G (guanine).   But, instead of T (thymine) I have U (uracil).  U know?  Ha! Ha! Ha! U, you.  Get it?

     "Do you remember how Polly made exact copies of DNA?  Well I'm made pretty much the same way.  Polly's cousin, RNA polymerase makes me though.   And remember those ON and OFF switches?   Well, the switch needs to be ON for me to get made.  Here, look at me being made in the nucleus!

     "Now you can see how I am an exact copy of a Gene.  But, I'm a copy of just a bit more than one Gene.  I include some extra nucleotides that need to be snipped out.  Don't really know why that is.   Just is, I guess!  But truth be told, I get snipped and all gussied up and high-tail it to the gates in the nuclear membrane.

      "Why don't y'all go through the nuclear membrane gates and into the cytoplasm with me?  See ya on the other side!"

RNA SYNTHESIS:    For Parents & Teachers

Learn more, google:
mRNA
RNA synthesis
DNA transcription
gene transcription

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