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why is uracil is replaced by thymine in RNA?

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  • Asked by Reynu
  • on 2011-03-02 04:57:24
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Jon-Richfield says:

Your question as stated, is rather confusing. I assume that what you mean is why thymine is replaced by uracil in RNA? If not, you will have to elaborate!

The short answer is that I do not know; that is a rather specialist question. The following remarks are the purest guesswork and I hope you have enough salt to take them with.

The first thing I observe is that thymine is essentially methylated uracil. Now, putting it vaguely and generally, the methyl group in nucleic acids is like a cork on the sharp end of a practice weapon; its function is largely to prevent, or at least modulate, unwanted effects. This can be to disable certain functions, or it can be to make them more selective.

Consider by way of analogy, the design of a key. It requires two things; it must have gaps where lack of a gap would prevent its entry into the lock in functional positions, and it must have substance where a material projection is needed to push whatever must be pushed to work the lock. Thymine and uracil form very similar hydrogen bonds, but the methyl group on thymine gets in the way when it otherwise would pair cheerfully, but indiscriminately, with other bases. In practice its methyl group makes it bashful in the presence of anything but adenine. Such selectivity is vital in DNA, but RNA is a very different matter.

Uracil is a far more promiscuous base, and will pair with practically anything. This has little to do with the function of RNA, which occurs largely in unpaired chains, but it would be fatal to the transcription function of DNA.

Conversely, RNA has little to do with transcription in that sense, so the presence of uracil hardly matters, but on the other hand its single-stranded functions often involve the formation of (often apparently tangled) tertiary structures resembling those of proteins, and as in the case of proteins, hydrogen bond cross-linking can play many crucial and versatile parts in determining and stabilising such structures. No doubt uracil is valuable in many such positions, where its base-pairing functions would be irrelevant. Sorry to be so vague, but...

All that of course, subject to anyone knowing better...

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posted on 2011-03-02 08:24:15 | Report abuse


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MikeAdams#367 says:

The current thinking is that RNA came first: so we need to reverse the question. Why does DNA contain thymine rather than uracil? One suggestion is that cytosine can undergo deamination, and become uracil. In an RNA molecule there is no obvious clue that this has happened: both are normal bases. In DNA, by replacing uracil with thymine a deamination becomes obvious, since there should be no uracil present and its presence means that it needs to be repaired.

BTW the switch from ribose to deoxyribose probably relates to the fact that double helices with RNA (DNA:RNA or RNA:RNA) do not form as tight a bond as the DNA:DNA structure (generally forming the looser A structure, rather than the B structure typically seen in DNA). This is useful since it means that the RNA made in transcription is readily displaced from the DNA template by the other strand of DNA. If both boded equally well, then the RNA would tend to remain attached, rather that being released.

 

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posted on 2011-03-02 21:22:19 | Report abuse


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Jon-Richfield says:

Mike, your remark on the bonding between RNA cains as compared to DNA chains is fair, but your remarks on conversions between cytosine/uracil/thymine make no sense to me at all, least of all functionally in NA chains. Would you care to rephrase or elaborate on that point please?

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posted on 2011-03-04 12:48:18 | Report abuse

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MikeAdams#367 says:

Hi Jon

My thought is that if cytosine gets deaminated to form uracil there is no way to tell that this has happened in RNA, but it is clear in DNA. While most RNAs often show some double stranded nature (folding back on itself whenever complementary sequences all) it is not possible to say whether a localized unpaired GU was originally a GC since uracil is a legitimate base in RNA and there is no intrinsic reason to presume which base should be at that location. However, in DNA such a deamination is obvious: since uracil should never be present, you can immediately tell that its presence is a mistake.

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posted on 2011-03-04 17:48:43 | Report abuse

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Jon-Richfield says:

Mike, (speaking in strictly non-expert mode, please note!) although I see your point as far as it goes, I suspect that I am missing something. Are there grounds for regarding deamination as a significant mode of NA degradation and point mutation, as compared to say accidental incorporaion of the wrong base? And if so, why particularly cytosine/uracil? Why not other deaminations? Or is there a repertoire of point error corrections, of which this is one?  Unless cytosine/uracil is a particularly likely or common form of mutation, it seems a rather arbitrary and drastic adaptation to change a particular base, don't you think? And do you know of any evidence to to suggest that DNA repair mechanisms replace uracil with cytosine in practice?

Please note, I am not denying or deriding your idea, just questioning it from a position of ignorance.

 

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posted on 2011-03-07 06:49:46 | Report abuse


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rezaentezari says:

I think that part of this event about thymine and uracil is related to Evolutionary road of genetic material. We know that that RNA came first and there was an "RNA world" before DNA evolved. After DNA evolved, thymine may have proved a preferable material for storing genetic information because of its much greater stability; RNA breaks down relatively quickly, but DNA is stabilized by its double-stranded form.I addition, Thymine base pairs only with Adenine. Although Uracil shows higher affinity for Adenine, it can also bind to cytosine, guanine and another uracil so chances of errors during replication is possible if uracils were to be present in DNA.Also, the methyl group in thymine has a protective role for DNA.

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posted on 2012-01-01 21:06:55 | Report abuse


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lukea62 says:
Uracil is energetically less expensive to produce than thymine, which may account for its use in RNA
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posted on 2012-03-17 20:59:54 | Report abuse


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