 Although the structure of DNA showed how inheritance works , it was still not known how DNA influences the behavior of cells . In the following years , scientists tried to understand how DNA controls the process of protein production . It was discovered that the cell uses DNA as a template to create matching messenger RNA , molecules with nucleotides very similar to DNA . The nucleotide sequence of a messenger RNA is used to create an amino acid sequence in protein ; this translation between nucleotide sequences and amino acid sequences is known as the genetic code . 
