Because knobs have to go into holes, all polymers have distinguishable right and left ends, and a directionality. An ordered succession of symbols or characters drawn from an alphabet of a finite set. Each carries a set of programs for the synthesis of little machines. The machines are the operational polymers. DNA is the sole informational polymer in most organisms.
Proteins are the major operational polymers.
And RNA fits somewhere in between. RNA plays a role in information transfer and in operations. The focus of my talk today will be on how these polymers do their thing. Replication duplicates the genetic material. And transcription and translation take the information that is carried by the informational molecules and transmit it to the operational ones.