In order to understand the functionality of genes and the importance of their expression, it is important to be able to understand proteins and, therefore, amino acids. Many techniques allow one to look at proteins at the amino acid level; however, very few allow researchers to understand them at the nucleic acid level. It is obvious that in order to study proteins and amino acids at the nucleic acid level, one would need to look at RNA. Unfortunately, because of the nature of RNA (its single-stranded nature) it is a very labile substrate and difficult to study, especially if the RNA of interest is present in cells at a low abundance.