Translation: DNA To MRNA To Protein | Learn Science At Scitable

The genes in DNA encode protein molecules, which are the "workhorses" of the cell, carrying out all the functions necessary for life. For example, enzymes, including those that metabolize nutrients and synthesize new cellular constituents, as well as DNA polymerases and other enzymes that make copies of DNA during cell division, are all proteins.

In the simplest sense, expressing a gene means manufacturing its corresponding protein, and this multilayered process has two major steps. In the first step, the information in DNA is transferred to a messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule by way of a process called transcription. During transcription, the DNA of a gene serves as a template for complementary base-pairing, and an enzyme called RNA polymerase II catalyzes the formation of a pre-mRNA molecule, which is then processed to form mature mRNA (Figure 1). The resulting mRNA is a single-stranded copy of the gene, which next must be translated into a protein molecule.

Figure 1: A gene is expressed through the processes of transcription and translation.During transcription, the enzyme RNA polymerase (green) uses DNA as a template to produce a pre-mRNA transcript (pink). The pre-mRNA is processed to form a mature mRNA molecule that can be translated to build the protein molecule (polypeptide) encoded by the original gene.© 2013 Nature Education All rights reserved. Figure Detail During translation, which is the second major step in gene expression, the mRNA is "read" according to the genetic code, which relates the DNA sequence to the amino acid sequence in proteins (Figure 2). Each group of three bases in mRNA constitutes a codon, and each codon specifies a particular amino acid (hence, it is a triplet code). The mRNA sequence is thus used as a template to assemble—in order—the chain of amino acids that form a protein.

Figure 2: The amino acids specified by each mRNA codon. Multiple codons can code for the same amino acid.The codons are written 5' to 3', as they appear in the mRNA. AUG is an initiation codon; UAA, UAG, and UGA are termination (stop) codons.© 2014 Nature Education All rights reserved. Figure Detail But where does translation take place within a cell? What individual substeps are a part of this process? And does translation differ between prokaryotes and eukaryotes? The answers to questions such as these reveal a great deal about the essential similarities between all species.