Julie discussed wanting to become pregnant with her gynecologist. that doctor required julie to have a thorough physical examination by her internist, including ensuring all vaccinations were up to date before becoming pregnant. once the gynecologist received the internist's report that julie's medical examination was normal, he referred her to another physician in his practice, an obstetrician. an obstetrician is a

An obstetrician is a doctor who specializes in the birthing process, including: helping women become pregnant, the pregnancy, and visits after the baby is born. This doctor will be present during the delivery of the baby, to make sure everything is going as planned.

Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, controlling virtually every reaction within as well as providing structure and serving as signals to other cells. proteins are long chains of  amino acids  , and the exact sequence of the amino acids determines the final structure and function of the protein. instructions for that sequence are encoded in  genes  . to make a particular protein, a messenger ribonucleic acid (mrna) copy is made from the gene (in the process called  transcription  ), and the mrna is transported to the  ribosome  . protein synthesis, also called  translation  , begins when the two ribosomal subunits link onto the mrna. this step, called initiation, is followed by elongation, in which successive amino acids are added to the growing chain, brought in by transfer rnas (trnas). in this step, the ribosome reads the  nucleotides  of mrna three by three, in units called  codons  , and matches each to three nucleotides on the trna, called the anticodon. finally, during termination, the ribosome unbinds from the mrna, and the  amino acid  chain goes on to be processed and folded to make the final, functional protein