The Exceptions to the Central Dogma of Biology—Bending the Rules and Extending the Scope

The central dogma is an organizing framework for how information flows in biological systems. First presented in 1957 by Francis Crick in his talk “On Protein Synthesis” as a fundamental hypothesis of how information is transferred from DNA to proteins but not out of proteins, it is now introduced in cell biology textbooks as three sequential cellular processes: DNA replication, RNA transcription, and protein synthesis. Here, I discuss our understanding of the central dogma, its uniqueness (Crick was able to create a framework based on little evidence), and how (the futile) attempts to challenge it shape our view of biological systems. Key Points/ Highlights The central dogma was a fundamental hypothesis, based on limited experimental evidence, that shaped molecular biology and became an organizing framework for information flow in biological systems. Several discoveries, including reverse transcription, splicing, RNA and DNA editing, and prions, challenged the central dogma, but were incorporated into biological systems as variations, and also changed our view of information transfer.