Making proteins

An Example (with codon wheel)

An example of a DNA sequence might be

CCC TGT GGA GCC ACA CCC TAG

If you use our DNA decoder (codon wheel*), you can decode this triplet by triplet. Start from the inside of the wheel: find the first letter of your codon in the centre of the wheel and work outwards, through the second ring (with the next letter) and so on, to find the corresponding amino acid.

This would make the amino acid chain:

P - C - G - A - T - P Proline-Cysteine-Glycine-Alanine-Threonine-Proline

(*You can get a copy of a codon wheel from here. Have a look at more activities in our downloads section)

There is a Flash movie here for which you will require a plugin. Please click this link to download Flash Player.

Check your answers from the codon wheel with our new codon cracker at right. Click on the coloured letter buttons to enter the triplet then click on translate to decode the triplet.

Try decoding a longer sequence and looking up the protein it comes from with our Codon Cracker with Function Finder in the Animation/Video box below.

Most proteins are actually much longer than this. Many of the proteins that make your body makes contain hundreds of amino acids. So if we know what the DNA sequence is, we can work out which amino acids the protein must contain and in what order.

(Pass mouse over icons in the image to see what proteins they represent.)