Explain the significance of complementary base pairing in DNA to transcription and translation.

Complementary base pairing conserves information from DNA to polypeptides. This is because adenine always pairs up with thymine and guanine pairs up with cytosine. Complementary base pairing allows RNA nucleotides to be assembled along one strand of DNA, leading to the production of a copy of the base sequence of the gene, mRNA. This process follows the same rules for the bases, except that uracil pairs with adenine as RNA does not contain thymine. The information in mRNA is essential for polypeptide synthesis. mRNA contains a series of codons and each tRNA comprises of an anticodon. Each anticodon is complementary to a codon on mRNA. Each anticodon carries the amino acid corresponding to it. Further understanding: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/biology/cell_biology/rna/revision/3/