Project Description
Background
A nucleic acid is a chain of nucleotides that stores genetic information in the biological system. Each nucleotide contains a sugar, phosphate group, and nitrogen base.
Nucleic acids come in two natural forms called deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). DNA consists of four nitrogenous bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. RNA consists of four nitrogenous bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil.
Transcription is the process of copying a segment of DNA into a new molecule of messenger RNA.
To transcribe a DNA sequence into a sequence of messenger RNA, apply the following rules of complementary nitrogenous base pairing:
- DNA’s guanine (G) base is complementary to RNA’s cytosine (C) base.
- DNA’s cytosine (C) base is complementary to RNA’s guanine (G) base.
- DNA’s thymine (T) base is complementary to RNA’s adenine (A) base.
- DNA’s adenine (A) base is complementary to RNA’s uracil (U) base.
Example:
Consider the following DNA sequence:
AAGCTGGTTTTGACGACThe messenger RNA transcribed from the DNA sequence would be:
UUCGACCAAAACUGCUGYour Task
Write a function called dna_to_rna() that accepts a string representing a DNA sequence as a parameter and returns the corresponding transcribed RNA sequence as a string.
To transcribe a DNA sequence into a sequence of messenger RNA, apply the following rules of complementary nitrogenous base pairing:
- G is complementary to C
- C is complementary to G
- T is complementary to A
- A is complementary to U
If an invalid DNA sequence is passed as an argument, dna_to_rna() returns -1.
