Neocities.org

mRNA.

I'm going insane

I feel mean sometimes, yet I just love everyone

finals and everything is downhill

Hmmm...How do I condense all of this information into a short series of commments? Lol! I will give it a shot...

If the cell was a house, then DNA would be something like the blueprints of that house. This blueprint doesn't just show how things are assembled. It also contains instructions for how the bricks of the house (i.e.: the "Proteins") are made so that the house can be rebuilt should anything start falling apart. DNA is kept within a particular room of the house called the "Nucleus".

The DNA blueprint itself is written in a language made up of only four letters. Each of these letters represents a different chemical inside of DNA: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G), and Cytosine (C). These are called "Base Pairs" because A is always paired with T, and G is always paired with C. It is similar to how letters are combined into words according to certain rules.

In order for Proteins to be created, first these instructions must be read from a section of the DNA referred to as a "Gene". This process is called "Transcription" because the letters within that section are "transcribed" (i.e.: copied out) to form "messenger RNA" (or "mRNA" for short). The mRNA uses almost all of the same letters as DNA, except Thymine (T). Instead, it uses Uracil (U).

mRNA is literally a message. After Transcription is complete, the mRNA is then sent to another room, the "Ribosome". If the Nucleus is where the blueprints are stored, then the Ribosome is where the bricks are made. The bricks themselves are made up of chemicals called "Amino Acids". We can think of mRNA like a recipe that shows how to chain together Amino Acids.

Transfer RNA (or "tRNA" for short) brings in Amino Acids based on what is written within the mRNA. This process is called "Translation" because we are "translating" from one chemical language into another (i.e.: from the pattern of Base Pairs within mRNA into a combination of Amino Acids brought in by tRNA).

The steps in the recipe are written as little three-letter sequences called "Codons". Each Codon describes a different Amino Acid, or tells when to start and stop this process of brick-making (i.e.: "Protein Biosynthesis")...Does all of that make sense? If not, let me know and I will try to explain it in a different way until it becomes easy to understand.