what are made up of dna
While DNA is made of nucleotides, proteins are made of amino acids, a group of 20 different chemicals with names like alanine, arginine, and serine. The genetic code enables a cell to translate the nucleotide language of DNA into the amino acid language of proteins.
A gene is the basic physical and functional unit of heredity. Genes, which are made up of DNA, act as instructions to make molecules called proteins. In humans, genes vary in size from a few hundred DNA bases to more than 2 million bases. The Human Genome Project has estimated that humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes.