Dumb question about proteins.

[leftventricle]

I don't really get it.
1) Proteins are made by DNA? or out of DNA?

2) And then some questions about DNA: What is a nucleotide? How does it compare on the scale of DNA levels?

[leftventricle]

Yeah, and I also want to know about the term 'residue'. It's meant to refer to the amino acid subunit of a polypeptide. Do you only call it that when the amino acid is IN the polypeptide?

[JackBean]

DNA is a template in accordance to which is synthesised mRNA and this works as template for synthesis of proteins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_do ... ar_biology
so, proteins are made of amino acids, nucleic acids from nucleotides
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleotide
these are composed from nucleobase, sugar (ribose or deoxyribose) and phosphate (one in nucleic acids, in free nucleotides up to three, recall ATP etc.)

residue is in common some sort of remainder of some molecule, you could have acyl residue derived from carboxylic acid. In amino acids/proteins it refers to the side chain coming from alpha carbon, defining each particular amino acid