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What error correction does RNA have? Are you just referring to the third base in the codons? DNA has some but I don't know of any for RNA, and it hardly seems w
by tgb 5y ago
What error correction does RNA have? Are you just referring to the third base in the codons? DNA has some but I don't know of any for RNA, and it hardly seems worth it for most organisms to have RNA error-correction: it's better to just degrade the RNA and retranscribe it.
- fastaguy88 5y agoRNA and DNA essentially use the same genetic code, which is degenerate and thus somewhat error correcting.
- tgb 5y agoYou mean the degeneracy in the last base of codons that I mention? I wouldn't even call that an error correcting: would you count a file type that just skipped every third byte 'error correction'? I wouldn't. This isn't a robust system and most changes to any bases will change the protein sequence. Contrast that to DNA which does have error correction, since there are two strands instead of one and also two chromosomes with nearly identical information. Both are used to repair errors, at least some of the time. I'm not aware of such a system for RNA and it's not clear where it would get the information from - though maybe the most likely system would be a 'self-destruct' where errors are detected but since repair is impossible, the RNA is just destroyed.
- fastaguy88 5y agoI completely agree. I was addressing a confusion of the previous poster.