What is Central Dogma? That is a question that we tackle in this essay. First, we start with the basics of it. Many theories have been developed from the research of this DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. One of them is Central Dogma. It first starts with the finding that the genetic information found in chromosomes is located on the DNA, and not the protein, as McCarty and MacLoed announced to the public in 1944. It was then also backed by the E. Coli experiment made by Hershey and Chase. Then chemist Erwin Chargaff discovered that the %'s of DNA were equalities of A = T and G = C, which are now known as Chargaff's rules, which was then explained by the discovery of the double helix by Francis Crick and James Watson. There double helix creation not only explained Chargaff's findings but it also suggested the basic mechanism of DNA replication, which is the big part of Central Dogma. Because of the double helix, it can separate into to DNA strands, and "new" nucleotides then match up with there corresponding nucleotide (T with A and G with C). These nucleotides then are connected to form the sugar-phosphate backbones, and are completely identical to the "old" double helix DNA strands. This is now known as the semiconservative model, which differs from the conservative model who suggests that the parent remains completely intact and the dispersive model, who states that all four strands of DNA, after the double helix is replicated, have a mixture of old and new DNA. However, the semiconservative model was proven to be correct by Stahl and Meselson and seems like the basic principle we all wanted, but there is more to DNA replication. .
DNA replication is amazing in the fact that it copies about 6 billion base pairs in a minimal amount of time with remarkable accuracy (about 1 mishap in 1 billion pairs), thanks to mismatch repair that is found in DNA polymerase. It all starts in at sites called origins of replication.
