Why do we need to take genetic information out of the nucleus? It's because we're going to use it to make a protein, which we can only do in the cytoplasm. The cytoplasm contains all the machinery, or the equipment, that is used to make the proteins. It's just like how my kitchen contains all the equipment for cooking my recipe. If I'm going to make my food inside my kitchen, then I need my recipe card. If we're going to make proteins in the cytoplasm, then we need the genetic recipe. That recipe comes in the form of RNA.
In this lesson, we're only going to be talking about transcription. That means we won't be getting through the entire central dogma. We'll only get to the point where we end up with RNA. In order to investigate the steps involved, we'll have to take a look at some close-up images that show how all of the molecules are arranged.