20 - 016 DNA - RNA - Proteins

It is very important that when you are trying to understand something that you first establish in your mind a simple model that you can then drill down from to more detailed lower level models. You can call these models, diagrams, frameworks or process flows. To support understanding the best ones are hierarchical because at the top level it is like a summary or precise which is then linked to lower models which serve to expand on the detail. The author is from a professional computer background where the design of computer systems has always been dependent on the use of such modelling or process design techniques. From the top level Enterprise Architectures (EA) down through to the Unified Modelling Language (UML) these are the established techniques for designing and building computer systems. Now being only an armchair biologist and chemist for me to understand these subjects I have to apply my digital methodologies to them. This is why it is called the Digital Human.

So being an armchair biologist and chemist I have a preference for locating models that have been created by experts within these professions that coincide with the types of model I would have been familiar with or created in my digital profession. So I have located just such a diagram below which is copyrighted to Nature Education (2014). 

So in this one diagram it at a high level establishes the process flow from DNA through RNA and to Protein creation. The protein is the living cell. It does not go into the detail of DNA transcription to RNA nor the Translation from RNA to the Proteins. At this stage we do not want any more detail or complexity (eg mRNA). We just want simplicity. So in simple terms the DNA which is like a roadmap is transcriped into a simpler linear sequences of RNA which become the recipes for making proteins by sequencing the amino acids within these proteins. It is important that you get this very simple model understood. We will enlarge on the detail as we drill down into this model later in the book.