In: Biology
Discuss the central dogma of molecular biology in detail and how RNA viruses makes use of this process
Central dogma of molecular biology states that the flow of genetic information takes place unidirectionally in two step process that is the transcription and translation from gene to protein. according to this the DNA transcribes into RNA which will translate into protein.
However this is not actually the case. The DNA itself replicate and RNA can also reverse transcribed to DNA by the mechanism of reverse transcription with the help of enzyme reverse transcriptase. This whole process actually turns out to be central dogma of molecular biology. THis can be seen in the following diagrma.
The virus get benefitted with this process of central dogma as there are many viruses whose genetic information is stored in RNA. When they infect another body their RNA transcribed back to DNA which later gets transcribed and translated to express the protein. Retroviruses are among this category. This property helps them in infections and replication in host cells.