Nucleic Acids and Protein Synthesis

Because enzymes control the metabolic pathways that enable cells to survive, cells must have information for producing these specialized proteins. Many other proteins are important in physiology as well, such as blood proteins, the proteins that form muscle and connective tissues, and the antibodies that protect against infection. The information that instructs a cell to synthesize a particular protein is held in the sequence of building blocks of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic material. The correspondence between a unit of DNA information and a particular amino acid constitutes the genetic code.