A theory, referred to as the “central dogma,”
describes the interrelationships among these major processes
(20,21). The central dogma defines the paradigm of molecular
biology that genetic information is perpetuated as sequences of
nucleic acid, but that genes function by being expressed in the
form of protein molecules (20). The flow of genetic information
among DNA, RNA, and protein that is described by the
central dogma is illustrated in Fig. 1. Individual DNA molecules
serve as templates for either complementary DNA strands
during the process of replication or complementary RNA molecules
during the process of transcription.