anticoding strand, antisense strand

anticoding strand, antisense strand

or

non-sense strand

the strand in the DUPLEX DNA that is complementary to the CODING strand, and is not transcribed into mRNA. It has a NUCLEOTIDE SEQUENCE that corresponds to that of mRNA, except that U replaces T in mRNA. Compare CODING STRAND.

It should be noted that there is confusion in the literature over the meaning of the terms ‘anticoding strand’, ‘antisense strand’, ‘nonsense strand’, ‘CODING STRAND’ and ‘sense strand’ of DNA. Some authors use them with the opposite meanings, i.e. the anticoding (antisense) strand is the strand that is transcribed into mRNA and is therefore complementary to it; the coding (sense) strand is the strand with the same sequence as mRNA, except that U replaces T in the mRNA. Others describe the anticoding strand as the strand that is transcribed into mRNA, but give the alternative name for this as the sense strand, and the coding strand as the strand having the corresponding sequence to mRNA, with the alternative name ‘antisense’.