Mistake Master
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Mistake Master · AP Biology · Unit 6 · Step-Through Animation

The Message, Not the Protein

You'll learnhow RNA polymerase reads one template strand to build a single strand of RNA.

RNA polymerase reads one strand of a gene and builds a strand of RNA — not a protein, not ever — and in a eukaryote that strand is edited before it is allowed to leave the nucleus. Ten short steps; press Next for each one.

10 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · TRANSCRIPTION MAKES RNA · RNA BUILT 5′→3′ · TEMPLATE READ 3′→5′ · CAP + TAIL + SPLICE · v5

DNA → RNA · template 3′→5′ · RNA 5′→3′ · then cap, tail, splice
Before you start
What you're looking at
One gene, drawn flat: a grey coding strand above the pale violet template strand RNA polymerase will read.
The question
Which strand gets read, what does transcription produce, and why is that product edited?
Step 1 / 10