In this video, we're going to begin our introduction to types of RNA. Now, it's important to note that all life uses several types of RNA molecules that differ from each other in their functions. And so this includes the following 3 types of RNA that we have numbered down below, 1, 2, and 3. And, of course, the numbers here correspond with the numbers that you see down below in the image 123. Now the first type of RNA that you should all know about is messenger RNA, otherwise abbreviated as just mRNA. And so messenger RNA or mRNA as its name implies is going to act as a messenger carrying DNA-encoded information. RNA's function is to serve as a template for translation to build a protein. And so messenger RNA is going to be translated to protein, unlike these other types of RNA that we see down below. Now the messenger RNA or the mRNA contains what are known as codons, and codons are 3 nucleotides, that are going to be coding for a specific amino acid. And so we'll learn more about these codons as we move along through our course and specifically when we talk about the genetic code.
Next, the second type of RNA that you should all know about is ribosomal RNA, and ribosomal RNA is abbreviated as just rRNA, where the lowercase r here represents the ribosomal part. And so ribosomal RNA or rRNA differs from messenger RNA in that ribosomal RNA is not going to be translated into a protein. Instead, ribosomal RNA has a structural function because it forms part of the structure of ribosomes, and that's why it's called ribosomal RNA. Now these ribosomes are going to be very important for translation, which, again, we'll talk about later.
Transfer RNA is abbreviated as just tRNA, where, again, the lowercase t here represents the 't' in transfer. And so transfer RNA or tRNA, again, differs from the messenger RNA in that transfer RNA is not going to be translated into a protein. Instead, the transfer RNA's role is to carry amino acids to the ribosome during translation. And so the tRNA is going to be able to bind to amino acids and carry them to the ribosome. And we'll talk more about the ribosome and translation as we move forward in our course.
Now, unlike the mRNAs, which contain codons, tRNAs contain anticodons. Anticodons are also 3 nucleotide sequences, but these anticodons are going to be complementary to the mRNA codons. And so, again, we'll talk more about the process of translation and how the anticodons on the tRNA pair with the codons in the mRNA later in our course in a different video when we talk more about translation. But for now, if we take a look at our image down below, we can get a better feel for the difference between these 3 major types of RNA. So we have the types of RNA at the top, and there are 3 major types. The first major type is the messenger RNA or the mRNA, which is our standard RNA that we've been talking about in our previous lesson video so far. Then what we have is ribosomal RNA, which is still RNA, but it has a different function. The ribosomal RNA is not going to be translated into a protein like the messenger RNA is. Instead, the ribosomal RNA is gonna fold up on itself and become part of the structure of the ribosome. And so here we're showing you ribosomal RNA or rRNA. And so, you can see here the ribosomal RNA is represented here and down here as well. And the entire blue structure, tell us structure that you see here represents the ribosome, which is the primary structure responsible for translation, which we'll talk about later in our course. Now the 3rd and final major type of RNA that we're going to introduce here is the transfer RNA. And the transfer RNA here is represented as this little square or rectangular shaped box here. And the transfer RNA or the tRNA, it actually has a structure that looks like this where it folds up on itself. And at some point, what you'll notice is that these tRNAs, they bind specifically to amino acids. And so the amino acid, recall, is the monomer or the building block of a protein. And so the amino acids are going to be carried to the ribosome by these tRNA molecules. And so if you zoom into the structure of the tRNA, again, you can see over here that it is just a single strand of RNA that kinda folds up onto itself to create this complex structure. And, again, it can be bound to amino acids and bring amino acids to the ribosome during translation. Now again, it's important to note that the tRNA has anticodons. So the anticodons are found on the tRNA. And it's the messenger RNA or the mRNA, which we brought over here, in this image. It's the messenger RNA that actually contains the codons themselves, which are, again, codons are going to be 3 nucleotide sequences. The codons are found in the mRNA. The anticodons are found on the tRNA, and they are complementary to each other. And so this complementarity here is going to be very important when we start to talk about translation later in our course. But for now, this here concludes our brief introduction to the types of RNA, and we'll be able to get some practice applying these concepts and continue to learn more about these types of RNA as we move forward in our course. So I'll see you all in our next video.
