Build A Protein
BY: AMANDA STEPHENS
Step 1: TRANSCRIPTION
The Process of Transcription
The process of transcription is sort of like making a blueprint for a protein. The mRNA is this blueprint. To get mRNA, RNA polymerase binds to a specific sequence in DNA and will unwind it into two separate strands. The RNA will then match new nucleotides with their compliments on the DNA strand, except instead of thymine, RNA uses uracil (A to U, G to C). The new RNA nucleotides will bind together to form a complementary copy of the DNA strand. This is called mRNA, the messenger RNA, which is completely fine with being a single strand. Once the sequence is complete the mRNA will then go be translated into the new protein.
STEP 2: TRANSLATION
The Process of Translation
In order to translate the mRNA into a protein, the mRNA will travel to the ribosome to be used as a template to assemble the chain of amino acids that will form the protein. Each codon on the mRNA strand represents a particular amino acid that the ribosome will translate in order of the chain to connect the amino acids together. It will keep going until it reaches a stop codon. Then the chain of amino acids form a protein.