BIO302 Final Term Handouts

Chapter # 12 Central Dogma of Life

The ‗Central Dogma‘ is the process by which the instructions in DNA are converted into a functional product. It was first proposed in 1958 by Francis Crick, discoverer of the structure of DNA.

The central dogma of molecular biology explains the flow of genetic information, from DNA to RNA, to make a functional product, a protein?

The central dogma suggests that DNA contains the information needed to make all of our proteins, and that RNA is a messenger that carries this information to the ribosomes?.

The ribosomes serve as factories in the cell where the information is ‗translated‘ from a code into the functional product.

The process by which the DNA instructions are converted into the functional product is called gene expression?.

Gene expression has two key stages - transcription? and translation?.

In transcription, the information in the DNA of every cell is converted into small, portable RNA messages.

During translation, these messages travel from where the DNA is in the cell nucleus to the ribosomes where they are ‗read‘ to make specific proteins.

The central dogma states that the pattern of information that occurs most frequently in our cells is:

From existing DNA to make new DNA (DNA replication?)

From DNA to make new RNA (transcription) Reverse transcription is the transfer of information from RNA to make new DNA, this occurs in the case of retroviruses, such as HIV?. It is the process by which the genetic information from RNA is assembled into new DNA.

The central dogma has also been described as "DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein,"[3] a positive statement which was originally termed the sequence hypothesis by Crick. However, this simplification does not make it clear that the central dogma as stated by Crick does not preclude the reverse flow of information from RNA to DNA, only ruling out the flow from protein to RNA or DNA. Crick's use of the word dogma was unconventional, and has been controversial.

The dogma is a framework for understanding the transfer of sequence information between information-carrying biopolymers, in the most common or general case, in living organisms. There are 3 major classes of such biopolymers: DNA and RNA (both nucleic acids), and protein. There are 3×3 = 9 conceivable direct transfers of information that can occur between these. The dogma classes these into 3 groups of 3: 3 general transfers (believed to occur normally in most cells), 3 special transfers (known to occur, but only under specific conditions in case of some viruses or in a laboratory), and 3 unknown transfers (believed never to occur). The general transfers describe the normal flow of biological information: DNA can be copied to DNA (DNA replication), DNA information can be copied into mRNA (transcription), and proteins can be synthesized using the information in mRNA as a template

DNA replications

In the sense that DNA replication must occur if genetic material is to be provided for the progeny of any cell, whether somatic or reproductive, the copying from DNA to DNA arguably is the fundamental step in the central dogma. A complex group of proteins called the replisome performs the replication of the information from the parent strand to the complementary daughter strand.

The replisome comprises: a helicase that unwinds the superhelix as well as the double-stranded DNA helix to create a replication fork SSB protein that binds open the double-stranded DNA to prevent it from reassociating RNA primase that adds a complementary RNA primer to each template strand as a starting point for replication DNA polymerase III that reads the existing template chain from its 3' end to its 5' end and adds new complementary nucleotides from the 5' end to the 3' end of the daughter chain DNA polymerase I that removes the RNA primers and replaces them with DNA.

DNA ligase that joins the two Okazaki fragments with phosphodiester bonds to produce a continuous chain. This process typically takes place during S phase of the cell cycle.

Transcription

Transcription is the process by which the information contained in a section of DNA is replicated in the form of a newly assembled piece of messenger RNA (mRNA). Enzymes facilitating the process include RNA polymerase and transcription factors. In eukaryotic cells the primary transcript is (pre-mRNA). Pre-mRNA must be processed for translation to proceed. Processing includes the addition of a 5' cap and a poly-A tail to the pre-mRNA chain, followed by splicing. Alternative splicing occurs when appropriate, increasing the diversity of the proteins that any single mRNA can produce. The product of the entire