The central dogma of molecular biology is an explanation of the flow of genetic information within a biological system. It was first stated by Francis Crick in 1956 and re-stated in a Nature paper published in 1970:


The central dogma has also been described as "DNA makes RNA and RNA makes protein," a positive statement which was originally termed the sequence hypothesis by Crick. However, this simplification does not make it clear that the central dogma as stated by Crick does not preclude the reverse flow of information from RNA to DNA, only ruling out the flow from protein to RNA or DNA. Crick's use of the word dogma was unconventional, and has been controversial.