For my biology class we were given scenarios to adress and one of the ones I pic

Question

For my biology class we were given scenarios to adress and one of the ones I picked was " DNA is translated into protein without going through an RNA intermediate"

I'm suppose to come up with a paragraph and talk about how this would change the biology within our bodies and some of the suggested topics to adress were Energy, DNA, Metabolism, Proteins, and Regulation. I don't have to give a respose to all.

This one I am having a difficult time coming up with answers. I know the RNA intermediate here would be the mRNA and i've come up with some ideas that making a protein would be faster if skipped passed the mRNA proccess and tRNA transfer. Also i've predicted a higher risk of mutations becase mRNA would not be there to correct them.

This is all I have so far.

Explanation / Answer

If DNA is translated into protein directly without going through an RNA intermediate, then energy decreases, metabolism increases, several processes of the cell will go uncontrolled, doing much harm to the cell. Huge machinery is required for translation of the protein, which is unable to fit with DNA, which is highly compressed and opens only at decoding region. In contrast, mRNA is a small molecule that can move easily through the translation machinery. Since translation machinery do not fit with DNA, proteins will not be produced properly. The mutation rate will be high and protein stability will be less. A new, separate mechanism has to be developed for this kind of protein synthesis.

With mRNA intermediate, the cell is having an extra regulation step for gene expression. Once the required protein is obtained, the mRNA will be degraded at faster rate, such that no excess protein is produced in the cell. If DNA has to translate into protein directly, then there will not be any regulation for the synthesis of proteins. Whereever and whenever there is a chance for translation machinery to fit with DNA, there it starts synthesizing proteins. Thus, there will not be proper regulation of cellular activities if DNA directly translates into proteins.

In addition, a cell contains only one copy of DNA. If there is a requirement of huge amount of protein suddenly, then it takes very great time for the DNA to produce all that protein. But, transcription which occurs at faster rate produces more number of mRNA copies, from which huge quantity of protein can be produced easily in short time. Thus, there is much harm to the cell, rather than benefit, if DNA translates directly into proteins.

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