03857 IUPAC Gold Book - messenger RNA 10.1351/goldbook.M03857 M03857 current initialism: mRNA 1 An RNA molecule that transfers the coding information for protein synthesis from the chromosomes to the ribosomes. mRNA is formed from a DNA template by transcription. It may be a copy of a single gene or of several adjacent genes (polycistronic mRNA). On the ribosome, the sequence is converted into the programmed amino acid sequence through translation. DNA https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/D01597 RNA https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/R05386 chromosomes https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C01077 gene https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/G02604 ribosomes https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/R05389 sequence https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/ST06775 template https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/T06269 transcription https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/T06436 translation https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/T06475 PAC, 1992, 64, 143. 'Glossary for chemists of terms used in biotechnology (IUPAC Recommendations 1992)' on page 160 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199264010143) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M03857/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M03857/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M03857/plain Citation: 'messenger RNA' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.M03857 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-04-30T19:31:33+00:00