• Uses ribose instead of deoxyribose
  • Ribose has extra O on 2’ carbon
    • Extra O can link to phosphate group, causing self-cleave
• Cheaper to create than DNA
  • Half the cost of DNA
  • Nitrogen for nitrogenous bases is small part of diet
  • RNA uses uracil instead of thymine
    • Uracil requires less resources than thymine
• Different types of RNA do different functions
  • mRNA is read by ribosome to create proteins
    • Translation happens in cytoplasm
    • Anticodons link to codons in RNA
  • miRNA targets and destroys double stranded RNA