Question

Hairpins often form at palindromic sequences in single strands of either rna or dna. however, several key features differentiate the helical structure of an rna and a dna hairpin. select the statements that describe the helical structure of an rna hairpin.

Answer 1

Hairpin like structures are formed in both DNA and RNA but are common in RNA than in DNA. This is because DNA can be double stranded or single stranded while RNA is generally single stranded structure that can be double stranded only when it forms a hair pin like structure.
The features of hairpin structure in RNA are as follows:
1. This structure is a building block of many secondary structures of RNA.
2. The termination sequence during transcription also forms a hairpin loop like structure.
3. tRNA also forms a hairpin loop like structure and helps in the process of translation.