1960's Science and Technology | Biology: Molecular Revolution

Cracking the Code for RNA.

Marshall W. Nirenberg, working at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1961, performed brilliant experiments in biochemistry. These led to the molecular revolution that has continued since his work, done with his German postgraduate fellow J. H. Matthaei, was reported at the Fifth International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow. In 1953 the physicist George Gamow worked out some basics of the code. A single ribonucleic acid (RNA) could only code for four possible amino acids. Pairs of nucleic acids could code for sixteen possibilities. Since there are about twenty amino acids, at least three nucleic acids in RNA must code for each amino acid in proteins. But Gamow made a mistake when he suggested that overlapping sequences of RNA provided the code for different amino acids. Nirenberg and Matthaei corrected him and broke the RNA code.

Creating Artificial Protein.

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