The DNA sense strand looks like the messenger RNA (mRNA) transcript, and can therefore be used to read the expected codon sequence that will ultimately be used during translation (protein synthesis) to build an amino acid sequence and then a protein. For example, the sequence "ATG" within a DNA sense strand corresponds to an "AUG" codon in the mRNA, which codes for the amino acid methionine. However, the DNA sense strand itself is not used as the template for the mRNA; it is the DNA antisense strand that serves as the source for the protein code, because, with bases complementary to the DNA sense strand, it is used as a template for the mRNA. Since transcription results in an RNA product complementary to the DNA template strand, the mRNA is complementary to the DNA antisense strand.
Hence, a base triplet 3′-TAC-5′ in the DNA antisense strand (complementary to the 5′-ATG-3′ of the DNA sense strand) is used as the template which results in a 5′-AUG-3′ base triplet in the mRNA. The DNA sense strand will have the triplet ATG, which looks similar to the mRNA triplet AUG but will not be used to make methionine because it will not be directly used to make mRNA. The DNA sense strand is called a "sense" strand not because it will be used to make protein (it won't be), but because it has a sequence that corresponds directly to the RNA codon sequence. By this logic, the RNA transcript itself is sometimes described as "sense".