SNORKS

Today in class we had to take a strand of DNA, transcribe it to mRNA, and then determine what traits our snork would have based on the amino acids that the RNA coded for. We had Snicker Snork, and it came out looking a little...demonic.
But even before we could get to this project, we had to understand protein synthesis, which is how this DNA became visible traits. If you're not quite sure about how that works, here's a quick review.
1 TRANSCRIPTION:
Starting at the promoter (or TATA box in eukaryotes), DNA is unzipped and filled in with RNA polymerase.  This RNA polymerase is single-stranded so it can get out of the nucleus, but it's not quite ready yet.
2 RNA PROCESSING:
This only happens in eukaryotes, but the RNA is fitted with a G cap to protect it and a poly-A tail to stop enzymes in the cytoplasm from digesting any coding nucleotides.
3 TRANSLATION
rRNA in the ribosome. The ribosome reads the mRNA 5'-3' while accepting amino acids from the tRNA, creating a polypeptide chain, and releasing the tRNA. You go ribosome! Also, the tRNA has anticodons which correspond to the codons of mRNA, or groups of 3 nitrogen bases that code for a specific amino acid.
All this out of a little demonic picture. DNA really is pretty cool when you think about it (otherwise it's just confusing!)