Protein Synthesis and Breakdown

Proteins are made from genes and later broken down when they are no longer needed. This page follows that path from gene information to protein degradation, or protein breakdown. It shows how cells build proteins and how they remove them at the right time.

The process begins with genes, which car...

Cells have to follow a multi-layered process to synthesize an accurately folded protein from the information encoded in the genes. 

This process has two major steps, transcription and translation. 

Transcription is the transfer of information from DNA to a messenger RNA or mRNA molecule. 

Here, the RNA polymerase II copies t...