Transcription of DNA is a simple process. First, the RNA polymerase binds to a specific sequence in the DNA and makes a bit of the DNA in the gene pry apart like this: .

Then, the RNA polymerase goes down the strand of DNA that it just pried apart and uses complementary base pairing on the template strand to make a mirrored set of DNA that should be the same as the non-template strand except the T will be a U. Next, the mRNA strand that was just created detaches from the template strand of DNA and the two original strands of DNA pair with each other again. Now you have a copy of the DNA in the form of mRNA and the original strand is still intact like we had here in our lab: .

In our lab that we did today, we did this exact process, we had a model of an RNA polymerase and we went down the DNA strand and copied the template strand to mRNA and detached the mRNA after we were done. We didn’t exactly separate the DNA and just put the mRNA strand over the non-template strand, and we copied the whole DNA strand that was given to us instead of taking the whole gene and trying to figure out where to start copying from and where to stop. We also did the translation of our mRNA strand in our lab. In translation, the first step is to find the start sequence which will always be AUG. When the small ribosomal subunit and the initiator tRNA (which has the anti-codon UAC in order to bind with AUG) find a codon in the mRNA that is AUG, the large ribosomal subunit joins with the small ribosomal subunit to start the translation which kind of looks like this: .

 

After the first tRNA has bound, another tRNA corresponding to the next codon gets placed next to the first tRNA and the proteins attached to the tRNA bind to each other. During translation, tRNA with matching codons to the mRNA is bound and the protein attached is bound to the protein on the tRNA before it. This keeps happening and a chain of proteins keeps growing until there is a codon that corresponds to a stop sequence on the mRNA. When the ribosomal subunits get to either UGA, UAG, or UAA, the subunits will detach and the chain of protein that was just made is free to swim away. The end product should look something like this:

 

During the lab we did this, we had the ribosomal subunits go along the mRNA until they found an AUG codon, then we started translation and made a chain of proteins. For our model, we only had 4 cutouts of tRNA so we had to erase what the sequence on it was in order to attach it with more proteins that we needed to make.