The central dogma of molecular biology deals with the detailed
residue-by-residue transfer of sequential information. It states
that such information can not be transferred from protein to either
protein or nucleic acid.
"The central dogma, enunciated by Crick in 1958 and the
keystone of molecular biology ever since. is likely to prove ill
considerable. over-simplification."
THIS quotation is taken from the beginning of an unsigned
Article l headed "Central dogma reversed It. recounting the
very important work of Dr Howard Temin' and others'
showing that an RNA tumour virus can use viral R NA
as a template for DNA synthesis. This is not t he first
time that t he idea. of the central . dogma has been misunderstood
, in one way or another. In t his article I
explain why t he term was originally introduced , its true
meaning, and state why I think that, properly under stood
, it is still an idea of fundamental importance.
The central dogma was put forward4 at a period when much of what we now know in molecular genetics was not
established. All we had to work on were certain frag - mentary
experimental results, themselves often rather
uncertain and confused, and a boundless optimism t hat
the basic concepts involved were rather simple and
probably much t he same in all living things. In. such a
situation well constructed theories can playa really useful
part in stating problems clearly and thus guiding experiment.
The two central concepts which had been produced .
originally without any e:.-plicit statement of t he simplification
being introduced , were t hose of sequential information
and of defined alphabets. Neither of these steps was
trivia l. Because it was abundantly clear by t hat time
that a protein had a well defined three dimensional structure,
and t hat its activity depended crucially on this
structure, it WM necessary to put the folding-up process
on one side, and postulate that, by and large, t he poly peptide
chain folded itself up. This temporarily reduced
the central problem from a three dimensional one to a
one dimensional one. It was alsonecessary to argue
that in spite of t he miscellaneous list of amino-acids
found in proteins (as t hen given in aU biochemical textbooks)
some of t hem, Stich as phosphoserine, were secondary
modifications; and that t here was probably a universal
set of twenty used throughout nature. In t he same way
minor modifications to the nucleic acid bases were ignored;
uracil in RNA was considered to be informationally
The central dogma of molecular biology deals with the detailed
residue-by-residue transfer of sequential information. It states
that such information can not be transferred from protein to either
protein or nucleic acid.
"The central dogma, enunciated by Crick in 1958 and the
keystone of molecular biology ever since. is likely to prove ill
considerable. over-simplification."
THIS quotation is taken from the beginning of an unsigned
Article l headed "Central dogma reversed It. recounting the
very important work of Dr Howard Temin' and others'
showing that an RNA tumour virus can use viral R NA
as a template for DNA synthesis. This is not t he first
time that t he idea. of the central . dogma has been misunderstood
, in one way or another. In t his article I
explain why t he term was originally introduced , its true
meaning, and state why I think that, properly under stood
, it is still an idea of fundamental importance.
The central dogma was put forward4 at a period when much of what we now know in molecular genetics was not
established. All we had to work on were certain frag - mentary
experimental results, themselves often rather
uncertain and confused, and a boundless optimism t hat
the basic concepts involved were rather simple and
probably much t he same in all living things. In. such a
situation well constructed theories can playa really useful
part in stating problems clearly and thus guiding experiment.
The two central concepts which had been produced .
originally without any e:.-plicit statement of t he simplification
being introduced , were t hose of sequential information
and of defined alphabets. Neither of these steps was
trivia l. Because it was abundantly clear by t hat time
that a protein had a well defined three dimensional structure,
and t hat its activity depended crucially on this
structure, it WM necessary to put the folding-up process
on one side, and postulate that, by and large, t he poly peptide
chain folded itself up. This temporarily reduced
the central problem from a three dimensional one to a
one dimensional one. It was alsonecessary to argue
that in spite of t he miscellaneous list of amino-acids
found in proteins (as t hen given in aU biochemical textbooks)
some of t hem, Stich as phosphoserine, were secondary
modifications; and that t here was probably a universal
set of twenty used throughout nature. In t he same way
minor modifications to the nucleic acid bases were ignored;
uracil in RNA was considered to be informationally
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