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Once upon a time, there was a young boy 

named Chordagoth. He had just gotten into 

his science class and sat down. However, 

his science teacher began to teach some 

pretty confusing stuff to him. It was all 

about something called DNA and RNA, and 

Chordagoth had no idea what she was 

talking about.

So Chordagoth decided to talk to his 

teacher after class to see if she could help 

him. 

"Well," she said. "Why don't I use some 

metaphors to help you?"

Chordagoth smiled and nodded.

"Think that you are in a kitchen, and that 

kitchen is our cell. In that kitchen, you have a 

recipe book, which is our nucleus. Inside that 

book, you have many pages, which are the 

nucleotides of our DNA. These pages have 

borders, which are made out of deoxyribose 

sugar and phosphates. There are four 

different ingredients in our recipes. They are 

Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, and Guanine. 

Adenine and Thymine are together and 

Cytosine and Guanine are together."

"Our DNA is very important, so important that 

we need to make copies of it for all the 

kitchens we have. This process of copying is 

called replication. To do this, we cut our pages 

in half using special scissors called Helicase 

and connect our complementary ingredients 

together using glue called DNA Polymerase to 

form exact copies of our pages!"

"This is necessary to get DNA into all of our 

cells and kitchens," his teacher said.

"Cool," Chordagoth said excitedly. "What 

next?"

"Well..."

"The next step is RNA, which is one-stranded 

instead of DNA's two strands. You see, 

Chordagoth, our recipe book is written in a 

different language, so the chefs in our kitchen 

are unable to read it."

"Uh oh!" Chordagoth said. 

"No, no, do not worry. A process called 

transcription rewrites the recipes in a way that 

the chefs can read them."

"They go in and rip the pages apart. Then what's 

called RNA Polymerase goes into the DNA and 

rewrites the recipe using part of the information 

that is already there. It also adds a new 

ingredient, Uracil, and takes away Thymine, in 

the list. Now when the chefs read the recipes, 

they read mRNA, or messenger RNA, and know 

what food they need to make. It is important to 

know that DNA contains the information, and 

RNA sends the message out to the kitchen and 

cell."

"So what happens with the mRNA thing?" 

Asked Chordagoth.

"Our new strand of mRNA, made up of a list of 

ingredients, goes out into the cytoplasm 

kitchen, and the chefs prepare to make a 

delicious batch of amino acid cookies from it."

"But...how to they do that?" Chordagoth said. 

"They need a little help from tRNA and rRNA," 

said the teacher.

"Let me explain," the teacher said. "The chefs 

go into their rRNA ribosomal refrigerator to 

begin the process of the translation of their 

recipes into cookies. Their ribosome 

refrigerator came from the special Endoplasmic 

Reticulum Factory. The chefs use their mRNA 

list and look through the fridge for the right 

ingredients. Then their transfer--tRNA comes 

in to bake the cookies by using the ingredients 

on the mRNA recipe sheet." 

"The tRNA reads the mRNA, Chordagoth, and 

for every three ingredients, known to the chefs 

as a codon, the tRNA brings in a 

complementary anti-codon that has a delicious 

amino acid cookie attached to it. The tRNA 

leaves the amino acid behind, leaving the 

cookie. There are several combinations of 

three ingredients, and many of the unique 

sequences make different cookies. The chefs 

call the entire batch of amino acids a 

polypeptide chain."

"But...why can't the DNA in the recipe book 

itself be used for this translation stuff?" Said 

Chordagoth, who was really craving a protein 

cookie at this time.

"Well, that's easy Chordagoth! Don't forget 

that the DNA is in a different language, and 

does not have all the right ingredients to make 

the cookies. We need the Uracil that came 

from transcription."

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