Beginning within the nucleus, the first step leading to the synthesis of a polypeptide is 1. translation of an rna nucleotide sequence into a sequence of amino acids 2. linking of nucleotides to form a polypeptide 3. removal of introns from rna and the stitching together of exons 4. translation of a dna nucleotide sequence into a sequence of amino acids 5. transferring of information from dna to messenger rna