mRNA is a single stranded RNA molecule, complementary to one of the DNA strands of a gene. Also known as messenger RNA, mRNA is synthesized in the nucleus and then exported to the cytoplasm, where the translation machinery (the machinery that actually makes the proteins), binds to the mRNA molecules and reads in them the code to produce a protein specific. During protein synthesis, an organelle called a ribosome moves along the mRNA, reads its sequence of bases, and uses the genetic code to translate each triplet of three bases or codon, into its corresponding amino acid.
