process overview
The overall process of protein synthesis – baking analogy
central dogma
- DNA is too valuable to the normal functioning of a cell to be allowed to exit the nucleus.
- If it were allowed to exit and it were distorted, cleaved, or damaged in any way in the chaotic environment of the cytoplasm, it would be rendered useless, resulting in the death of the cell, and possibly leading to the death of the organism.
- The central dogma of modern biology is that DNA codes for RNA which is a template for the production of a polypeptide.
one gene-one polypeptide hypothesis
- Hypothesis proposed by scientist George Beadle and Edward Tatum that each gene is unique and codes for the synthesis of a single polypeptide.
- They can be likened to a four letter alphabet that will form 64 words.
- Each word corresponds to a particular amino acid.
- The order that the nucleotide triplets (that form the words that correspond to an amino) will affect the order of the amino acids that make up a particular protein.