Monocistronic

Monocistronic is an adjective used in genetics which usually refers to messenger RNA and means that a single polypeptide chain will result from its translation.

Its antonym is polycistronic[?].

It is often stated that all eukaryote mRNAs are monocistronic, but the chloroplasts of plants for instance contain polycistronic[?] transcripts, e.g. the psbb/psbH/petB/petD region.

Monocistronic mRNA are in some cases (e.g. viruses) translated to form a polyprotein[?], which is processed by proteolytic cleavage to form the mature gene products.