RNA is also made of a long string of bases: guanine, cytosine and adenine (like DNA), but instead of thymine it has uracil — which is what turned up in the sample from Ryugu.

DNA (top) includes thymine (red); in RNA (bottom), thymine is replaced with uracil (yellow).

DNA is fundamental to the biology of all life on Earth, but how many of us actually know what it is or what it's made of?

Like DNA, it is made up of bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil. Scientists have previously found some or all of these bases in different asteroids that landed on Earth as meteorites.

Study: Human DNA tumor viruses evade uracil-mediated antiviral immunity. Image Credit: Naeblys/Shutterstock Background Ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses such as human T-cell lymphotropic virus-1 and ...

DNA and RNA are made up of five organic molecules called nucleobases – adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine and uracil. That’s the ACGT letter code used to represent DNA, while RNA swaps ...

Tohoku University. "Uracil switch in SARS-CoV-2 genome alters innate immune responses." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 November 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2020 / 11 / 201111104913.htm>.

Surprisingly, they found that the uracil-rich RNA fragment in the mutated-type SARS-CoV-2 viruses increased the production of the two cytokines.

During the process of transcription, DNA is converted to RNA, a complex molecule that is able to carry genetic information outside of the cell's nucleus. This page guides you through the ...