GENES+at+WORK

= How Do Genes Work? = Genes are often called the blueprint for life, because they tell each of your cells what to do and when to do it: be a muscle, make bone, carry nerve signals, and so on. And how do genes orchestrate all this? They make proteins. In fact, each gene is really just a recipe for a making a certain protein. And why are proteins important? Well, for starters, you are made of proteins. 50% of the dry weight of a cell is protein of one form or another. Meanwhile, proteins also do all of the heavy lifting in your body: digestion, circulation, immunity, communication between cells, motion-all are made possible by one or more of the estimated 100,000 different proteins that your body makes. But the genes in your DNA don't make protein directly. Instead, special proteins called enzymes read and copy (or "transcribe") the DNA code. The segment of DNA to be transcribed gets "unzipped" by an enzyme, which uses the DNA as a template to build a single-stranded molecule of RNA. Like DNA,media type="youtube" key="XuUpnAz5y1g" height="349" width="425"

=RNA is a long strand of nucleotides. This transcribed RNA is called messenger RNA, or mRNA for short, because it leaves the nucleus and travels out into the cytoplasm of the cell. There, protein factories called ribosomes translate the mRNA code and use it to make the protein specified in the DNA recipe. =

If all this sounds confusing, just remember: DNA is used to make RNA, then RNA is used to make proteins-and proteins run the show. NEXT: DNA RNA PROTEIN