Quote:
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A process where information is taken from DNA to acts as a blue print for creating a particular protein that is in demand by the body. This blueprint will allow the construction of the protein with the various materials required in its production.
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^the above is from
http://www.biology-online.org/
Anyhow, basically, DNA is first transcribed into RNA, which occurs as such:
Note that T is Thymine, A is Adenine C is Cytosine, and G is Guanine...and that A is 'attracted' only to T, and C to G (and vise versa). These are known as
nucleotides
(Sorry about the spacing...I don't really have the ten minutes required to work it out properly to spare, and I think it's moderately understandable as for what translates to what)
T T A G C T G C A A A T------DNA 'definition'
A A T C G A C G T T T A------RNA transcription
U U A G C U G C A A A U------mRNA (messenger RNA)
A
codon is a group of three of these. So in this case, the mRNA has four codons. UUA, GCU, GCA, and AAU. Again, note that instead of getting Thymine, A here attracts to a similar one known as Uracil which is for some reason the only thing available in the final transcription to the mRNA. A codon represents a particular
amino acid, which is used to build a protein. So essentially, mRNA will consist of hundreds and possibly thousands of codons to define each piece of the protein. Now, there are only 20 amino acids, while there are 64 possible codons (4^3). Certain amino acids are defined to multiple codons. This is thought as a 'safeguard' against mutation of a single nucleotide. If a mutation happens to change the codon, often a protein will lose some or all of it's functionality. Note: 61 codons define one of the 20 amino acids available; the other 3 instruct the synthesis to essentially finish.
Hope this helps. Ask me if you need anything cleared up. My -this took ten minutes to type- 'protein synthesis in a nutshell'.
protein synthesis 
Linear Mode
