How to Use RNA in a Sentence

RNA

noun
  • Obelisks are somewhat like these because they are made of RNA.
    — Discover Magazine, 31 Jan. 2025
  • Therein lies much of the mystery and magic of RNA.
    — Marlene Belfort, The Conversation, 10 Feb. 2026
  • Postmortem testing did find rabies virus RNA in the man.
    — Paula Wethington, CBS News, 11 Dec. 2025
  • The team also found RNA that would have been produced in response to some kind of stress.
    — NPR, 14 Nov. 2025
  • The only problem was that RNA doesn't usually hang around for very long.
    — NPR, 14 Nov. 2025
  • These included the amino acid glycine and uracil, a nucleotide base in RNA.
    — Mindy Weisberger, CNN Money, 28 Mar. 2025
  • Later, scientists could search for the RNA from a new variant and trace it back to its source.
    — Matthew Hutson, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2025
  • On the face of it, the odds of RNA forming just by chance seem astronomical.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 5 Jan. 2026
  • So chemists look for pathways that could inevitably lead to the formation of molecules like RNA.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 5 Jan. 2026
  • In this image, each color represents a different type of RNA.
    — Discover Magazine, 17 Oct. 2024
  • This finding suggested that the small RNA was somehow inhibiting it.
    — Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 30 Oct. 2024
  • But scientists are finding that our bodies are also home to exquisitely tiny rings of free-floating RNA.
    — Carl Zimmer, New York Times, 19 Feb. 2025
  • The problem is that it had been thought that borates hinder some of the reactions on the chemical pathway to RNA.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 5 Jan. 2026
  • The fish make fewer functional copies of an RNA that helps shut down transposable element movement.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 14 Aug. 2024
  • The system for copying parts of the genome into RNA for protein production comes from a virus called T7.
    — ArsTechnica, 2 July 2026
  • Amino acids power the machinery of life by forming proteins, while RNA carries the instructions to build them.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 29 Aug. 2025
  • That would be Messenger RNA or mRNA.
    — The Baltimore Sun, Twin Cities, 13 Aug. 2025
  • Normally, genes are processed before transcription in order to make a readable strand of RNA.
    — Joel Richter, The Conversation, 26 July 2023
  • There’s a lot of evidence that RNA molecules in different ways are a very important part of that story.
    — Quanta Magazine, 11 June 2026
  • That’s not something her human brain, for all its glorious complexity, could do on its own by studying the RNA data.
    — Amber Dance, Quanta Magazine, 9 Feb. 2026
  • In a follow-up exam conducted six years after the infection, vestiges of the virus’s RNA were found in the man’s semen.
    — Adam Kovac, Scientific American, 15 May 2026
  • His research has helped illuminate how some of the earliest biomolecules may have arisen and how RNA could assemble, replicate and evolve.
    — Noah Lyons, San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 May 2026
  • Nature makes polymers like DNA and RNA that eventually break down.
    — Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 28 Nov. 2025
  • Chinese scientists say their upgraded RNA-mapping technique could one day make such a study possible.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 22 Sep. 2025
  • The enzyme is a key component in producing purine, a building block of DNA and RNA.
    — Mindy Weisberger, CNN Money, 22 Aug. 2025
  • In future studies, the team hopes to use the discovery of this stealth RNA delivery system to create more eco-friendly fungicides.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 20 Dec. 2023
  • For decades, scientists have chased a mystery about how proteins’ building blocks first hooked up with RNA, the molecule carrying life’s code.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 29 Aug. 2025
  • So the virus carries the gene into the cell, where the gene travels to the nucleus and sets up shop and ultimately starts making the RNA and protein, etcetera.
    — Lauren J. Young, Scientific American, 4 May 2026
  • At least one case study indicates that viral RNA can persist in human bodily fluids for years after infection.
    — Adam Kovac, Scientific American, 15 May 2026
  • These vaccines use a fragment of the virus's genetic material (RNA) to teach your cells to make a protein that triggers an immune response.
    — Ayana Byrd, Health, 7 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'RNA.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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