Before making our colicin phages, let’s cover some basic molecular biology.
Molecular biology is like exploring the instruction manual for living things. It’s the study of the tiny details (genes) in our cells that determine how living things work.
As its name suggests, protein synthesis is the vital process of creating proteins.
Understanding and prioritizing protein synthesis is crucial because proteins serve as the foundational components of molecular biology, playing a fundamental role in various biological processes that sustain life.
Let’s break down protein synthesis in understandable terms.
Imagine you’re planning a big dinner party. To make things easier, you hire some help:
- Party planner who organizes the feast and plans the meal
- French chef to create the dishes
- Sous chef to assist the chef by providing the raw ingredients
Since the chef is French, the meal planner copies all the recipes in French.
The chef reads the translated recipes out loud to the sous chef, who brings the ingredients to the chef. The chef then combines these ingredients into dishes.
Now, let’s translate this back to molecular biology.
In our story, the cookbook is the genome, holding all the recipes. Each recipe is a specific gene.
Transcription
The party planner is an enzyme called RNA polymerase that organizes the process. The translated recipe is a special form of DNA called mRNA.
This process of copying genes from the genome into mRNA is called transcription. To transcribe is to make a written copy; therefore, polymerase transcribes genes into mRNA.
The “m” stands for messenger, so transcription can be thought of as copying a message with the instructions for protein synthesis.
Translation
The chef, who represents a macromolecular machine known as a ribosome, reads the mRNA to the sous chef, represented by a molecule known as tRNA (with “t” standing for transport).
The sous chef, in turn, transports amino acids (AKA ingredients) to the ribosome.
This step is called translation because the ribosome transforms these raw ingredients into prepped dishes, forming polypeptide chains. Polypeptide chains are like pre-cooked proteins.
Protein folding
In protein synthesis, the “cooking” is a folding step. The polypeptide chains are folded into a 3D structure, making them functional proteins.
Understanding this process helps us harness molecular biology using gene editing, turning our cells into a protein-cooking kitchen!
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