Proteins play a fundamental role for life and are the most versatile and diverse biomolecules. They are essential for the growth of the organism and perform a huge amount of different functions.
The passage of DNA to proteins begins with the step of transforming genetic information into an intermediary between DNA and protein. This intermediary is called messenger RNA (mRNA). The difference between DNA and mRNA is that the second corresponds to a very small fraction of all DNA, consists of a single chain (it is no longer a “zipper” but a strand), and that Thymine (T) is replaced by the Uracil (U). This fraction corresponds to the stretch of DNA that contains the sequence necessary to ultimately synthesize the protein.