 Dear students, in this module, I am going to talk about transcription. Transcription is a very important process by which information from the DNA is converted into the RNAs and onwards for protein synthesis. As you know, these proteins formed as a result of this process are very useful in the formation of cells as well as in the cellular life. As I just mentioned, cells are built up of proteins and carbohydrates and the DNA inside the nucleus is responsible for the creation of newer cells. In order to form a new cell, the information within the DNA has to be conveyed or converted into proteins. Let's take a look at how this process works step by step. In this figure, you can see that the DNA is coding for an RNA. This process is followed by encoding of the RNA into the proteins. So this entire process is a part of what we call the central dogma. The central dogma can then be broken into two components. The first part being the relaying of information from the DNA to the RNA and the second part being the transfer of this information from the RNA to the proteins. In this module, we are going to focus on the first part which is called transcription. This process to define is responsible for converting the DNA bases into the RNA bases. The DNA is double-stranded while the RNA is single-stranded. Following this, the process of translation is there. We will look at it later. Following this transcription, information from the DNA is converted into the RNA. A copy is therefore created which is used in creating the proteins which are the executive molecules or molecules responsible for execution of the information. So transcription therefore is a process by which the four nucleotide bases within the DNA are converted into the RNA. A DNA molecule may have hundreds or thousands of these bases and therefore the RNA molecule that is produced will have a similar number of bases in it as well. However, there are two differences that you need to remember. The first one is that in an RNA molecule there is no thymine and thymine is replaced by uracil. Secondly, the RNA molecule is a single-stranded molecule instead of the DNA which was the double-stranded version. Moreover, A only couples with the T in the DNA and G only couples with the C. However, in the RNA, A gets coupled with the U and C stays coupled with the G. So here is the process in detail. As you can see, the double-stranded DNA is shown here and the nucleotide bases T and A are coupled. Similarly, nucleotide base C is coupled with G and so on and so forth. Typically, G and C never couple with T and A and vice versa as well. So the process of transcription then is the process which decodes information from the DNA and prepares a copy of this information towards preparing an RNA molecule. The DNA to RNA conversion, as I just mentioned, involves two important steps. One that the double-stranded DNA is converted into a single-stranded RNA while thymine is replaced by uracil. The RNA then is constituted by four bases as well and an RNA molecule may have multiple copies of these four nucleotide bases. As I just mentioned, they include A, U, G and C. So in conclusion, DNA gives rise to an RNA. The DNA had four different types of bases A, T, C and G while the RNA has one difference from that, that is, uracil replaces thymine. More so, DNA is double-stranded while the RNA is single-stranded. These RNA molecules, in turn, later undergo a process called translation to produce proteins.