Central dogma of molecular biology

The principle that sequence information can pass among nucleic acids and from nucleic acids to proteins, but not from proteins back to nucleic acids.

DNA replication: The process by which a DNA molecule is copied to produce two DNA molecules. This route transfers sequence information from DNA to DNA.
DNA: A nucleic acid that stores hereditary information in sequences of four nucleotide bases. DNA is the principal cellular archive from which transcription reads sequence information.
Francis Crick: British molecular biologist who co-discovered DNA’s double-helical structure and formulated the central dogma. Crick introduced the principle and distinguished sequence transfer from other molecular influences.
Protein folding: The process by which a protein adopts a three-dimensional structure determined largely by its amino-acid sequence. Folding transmits structural effects between proteins, unlike the sequence information addressed by the dogma.
Molecular genetics: The study of genes and heredity through the molecules that store, transmit, and express genetic information. The dogma provides a compact framework for molecular genetics’ core information pathways.
Transcription: The synthesis of RNA using a DNA template. This route transfers sequence information from DNA to RNA.
RNA: A nucleic acid whose varied roles include carrying, regulating, and catalyzing biological information. RNA serves both as an information-bearing intermediate and, in some organisms, a genome.
Molecular Biology of the Gene: James D. Watson’s 1965 textbook presenting molecular genetics and the central dogma to a broad scientific audience. Its exposition helped make the dogma a standard framework for molecular biology.
Epigenetics: The study of heritable changes in gene activity that do not result from changes in DNA sequence. Epigenetic regulation affects gene expression without reversing sequence transfer from protein to nucleic acid.
Central dogma of computer science: A proposed analogy that treats biological information flow as comparable to information processing in computers. The analogy can obscure the dogma’s narrow claim about molecular sequence transfer.

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