Database Reference
In-Depth Information
mRNA carry information from the nuclei of your cells to the surrounding
cytoplasm
to
create proteins in a process called
translation
.
You probably noticed that this lookup table doesn't have the DNA letter T (for thymine)
and has a new letter U (for uracil). During
transcription
, U is substituted for T:
$
echo "ATGGTGACTCCTACATGA" | sed 's/T/U/g' | fold -w 3
AUG
GUG
ACU
CCU
ACA
UGA
Looking up these codons in the codon table, we can determine that this particular DNA
strand will translate into a protein with the following amino acids in a chain: methionine,
valine, threonine, proline, and threonine. This is a contrived example, but it logically
demonstrates how DNA instructs the creation of proteins that make you uniquely
you
. It's
a marvel that science has allowed us to understand the language of DNA, including the
start and stop punctuations.
