The central dogma of molecular biology and protein synthesis

Abstract

Abstract Suppose for a moment that you are the publisher of J. K. Rowling’s series of Harry Potter novels (don’t spend the money yet; we are just supposing). You have a single copy of her latest manuscript, say Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series. Basically, you have two tasks. The first is to replicate the manuscript in the English language several million times. The second is to translate the English- language manuscript into a number of other languages and then replicate those copies. Now suppose that you are a cell in possession of one copy of your genome, a small collection of DNA molecules. When you sense a round of cell division about to happen, you have two related tasks. The first is to replicate your DNA molecules exactly, so as to have two copies, one for each daughter cell. Unlike the publisher of Rowling’s books, you need only one new copy, not millions, but you will need to continue to replicate the DNA molecules at each round of cell division. The second task is to translate the DNA molecule language into that of RNA and then into that of proteins. A new complement of RNA and protein molecules is required for the new cell and for the process of cell division. So the task of a cell facing cell division is not unlike that of a book publisher in some basic ways.