The central dogma of molecular biology is an explanation of the flow of genetic information within a biological system. It refers to the flow of information from deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to ribonucleic acid (RNA),最后成蛋白质。DNA, RNA转换sion is carried out in a process calledtranscription. Then, the subsequent RNA sequence will be translated into protein in a process calledtranslation. The process is summarized in figure 1.

Figure 1: Central Dogma of molecular biology.DNA to RNA transcription is mediated by the RNA polymerase and then, RNA to protein translation is mediated by the ribosome.

There are some exceptions to this dogma which resulted from recent years genomic studies. For example, much of the DNA that does not encode proteins is now known to encode various types of functional RNAs.