Intramolecular hydrogen bonding in RNA molecules results in the formation of stem and loop (also known as hairpin loop) structures.
Note that the RNA forms a double stranded right-handed helix with . Note also that the structure is not the same as that of DNA.
The RNA shown is 24 nucleotides long. Nucleotides 1 through 8 and 17 through 24 form a stem and nucleotides 9 through 16 form a loop. Note the in the stem (A: red, C: green, G: orange, T: blue) and the unpaired bases in the loop (white).
(The stem and loop structure shown is part of the RNA in human telomerase. Telomerase protects chromosomes by restoring DNA that is lost from the ends during DNA replication. The RNA is used as a template and the enzyme is thus an internally-templated RNA-dependant DNA polymerase.)
