Proteins are the basis of how biology gets things done.
As enzymes , they are the driving force behind all of the biochemical reactions which makes biology work. As antibodies , they recognize invading elements and allow the immune system to get rid of the unwanted invaders. Genes are the functional units of the genome . Each gene encodes the information for how to make a specific protein. What we don't understand is how and why many different protein sequences , each encoded by a different gene, can form the same three-dimensional protein structure .