Describe how proteins are synthesized
Protein synthesis is extremely important for the survival of cells. This process is tightly regulated in order to ensure protein production is properly controlled. Assembly of a protein occurs in several steps, however the two major processes can be outlined as transcription and translation.1

Before understanding the details of how proteins are synthesized, one needs to understand the general notions of DNA. DNA is found within a cell’s nucleus, and protein synthesis occurs in the cytoplasm; therefore genetic information must be transferred from the nucleus to the cell. The first step of protein synthesis is transcription, which involves the formation of messenger RNA (mRNA) from DNA. mRNA holds information about a specific gene which will be carried out of the nucleus. mRNA is single stranded and is the template for protein synthesis. mRNA is simply a complementary copy of one of the strands of the DNA double helix that encodes for a specific protein.2

Transcription can be divided into three main steps: initiation, elongation, and termination. To initiate transcription, the enzyme RNA polymerase binds to a promoter sequence on the DNA strand.3 As a result, the binding causes the double stranded DNA to denature, revealing the template strand and formation of a transcription bubble. mRNA is synthesized within this transcription bubble through the addition of ribonucleotides complementary to the DNA template strand by RNA polymerase. RNA polymerase follows the rules of complementary base paring (except thymine will be replaced by uracil) to match ribonucleotides to the template strand. During the elongation phase, the transcription bubble moves down the template strand along with RNA polymerase from the 5’ to 3’ end. However, the addition of ribonucleotides to the nascent RNA strand is done in a 3’ to 5’ order. Once the RNA