Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
The central dogma is a term that was first coined in 1958 by Francis Crick and is used to explain the fundamental process in life that involves the flow of information from DNA to proteins. DNA is a nucleic acid that is the characteristic entity of all living things on this planet Earth while proteins are chemicals that control all the functions that take place in living organisms. Proteins have both structural and functional participation in success of life on Earth.
Word “Dogma” means a set of principles that are fixed by someone and these principles are undeniable. This words truly fits in the term Central Dogma because life always follows the same pattern of flow of information and no living thing ever deviate from this principle.
The Central Dogma is well named because it conveys all the information that it is meant to be. It is a fixed series of processes that take place to read all the information in DNA that is coded in the form of nucleotide sequences i.e. Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine. The specific sequence of these four nucleotide s determines which information is encoded in DNA. This information is then transcribed on messenger RNA which eventually translates the information printed on it into proteins.
Importance of Central Dogma in Biology:
In Biology, central dogma is the fundamental process that is being used to investigate modern problems faced by living organisms. If it was not the process of all living things, there could be separate processes in all individual organisms and consequently, it could be extremely difficult to carry out research on individual organisms according to their specific pattern of flow of information.
What could be some alternate name of central dogma?
Although it is the perfect word to explain a certain idea, but still there is exception of some viruses that have a protein called Reverse Transcriptase that causes a process which is reverse of central dogma; It synthesizes DNA from RNA. And apart from viruses, there could be other organisms that we have not discovered yet and they could be following the same pattern. Keeping this exception in view, there could be some other dynamic name that best describes the process or there could be classes of living things according to the pattern they follow for flow of information.
