Tranmere notched their second away win of the season and put a big dent in Wrexham's bid for a play-off place.
Neither side could get the upper hand early on but Rovers improved later forcing home keeper Mike Ingham to make a string of good saves until he was finally beaten 12 minutes from the end.
A free-kick came over from Gareth Roberts, defender Ian Sharps went up in the box and gave Ingham no chance from close range with a superb finish.
Chris Armstrong, Matt Crowell and Chris Llewellyn missed good openings for Wrexham in the first half when they might have sneaked in front.
Tranmere's best chance of the first half came in the dying minutes when Dave Beresford crossed and Barry Jones was clean through, only to hit his close-range shot into the ground from where the ball bounced up to give the keeper an easy save.
Beresford put Jones through again on the hour for a low angled shot that Ingham kept out with a diving save. He saved another shot from Jones and when the ball fell to Paul Hall he was unable to force it in past the keeper on the line.
Eugene Dadi had the next opening, meeting a superb left-wing cross from Beresford and again the keeper kept the ball out.
Dadi was foiled again on 70 minutes as a Roberts cross gave Hall a splendid chance at the back post but he failed to get a touch.
Tranmere manager Brian Little was delighted with the performance saying: "We've been talking about making sure that we improve our performance and I always thought we would do reasonably well.
"It was a solid second-half performance, coming here and restricting Wrexham when they hoped to get a good result." He added: "It was one of those games when I thought it might end up with us going down to a sucker punch. I'm not bothered now about how many points we get as long as the bottom four can't catch us." A disappointed home manager Denis Smith said: "I am not happy with the performance. It's been a bad day to end a bad week.
"There's a lot of things at the moment which need to be put right. We have made life difficult for ourselves but I'm still hoping we can reach the play-offs."