Every minute of every day your cells are building proteins. Proteins make up most of your body, including your bones, muscles, and organs. Special proteins, called enzymes, regulate chemical reactions in your brain and body that allow you to do many things essential to life, including digest food, breathe, and eliminate wastes. Specific proteins are made inside cells when the genes that have the instructions for building those proteins are activated, or expressed.

Gene expression is the process where genetic information in your cells is used to synthesize proteins that perform specific functions or are used as building blocks for larger molecules. In order to be expressed, genes have to go through the processes of transcription, which turns DNA into RNA, and translation, which turns RNA into proteins. This results in proteins being produced based on instructions from the DNA code. Proteins cannot be made directly from the genetic information in DNA because DNA does not usually leave the nucleus. DNA must be transcribed into RNA which travels to the ribosomes where it is translated to create the protein.

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