Final answer:
The three components that make up the structure of RNA are the nitrogenous base, ribose sugar, and phosphate group. RNA is single-stranded and contains ribose instead of deoxyribose sugar like DNA, with the bases adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil.
Step-by-step explanation:
RNA structure is composed of three essential components: a nitrogenous base, a ribose sugar, and a phosphate group. The correct answer to the question is a.) phosphate, nitrogenous base, ribose sugar. RNA is different from DNA in that it has a ribose sugar rather than a deoxyribose sugar. In RNA, the ribose sugar is connected to the nitrogenous base at the 1' position and to the phosphate group at the 5' position, forming the backbone of the RNA single strand.
Ribonucleic acid, or RNA, plays crucial roles in the process of gene expression, including being a messenger molecule (mRNA) that carries genetic information from DNA to instruct protein synthesis in ribosomes. The basic unit of RNA is the nucleotide, each of which contains three key parts: a ribose sugar, a phosphate group, and one of four nitrogenous bases—adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), or uracil (U), with uracil being the base unique to RNA in place of thymine (T) found in DNA. The sequence of nucleotides in an RNA molecule is dictated by the sequence of a gene on the DNA template.