TRNA: The operational RNA code and protein folding

Abstract

tRNA: The operational RNA code and protein folding Charles W. Carter, Jr., from the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, relates molecular recognition used in genetic coding to structures of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases and their cognate tRNAs. Genetic coding is simultaneously widely understood and little appreciated. Widely understood because Marshall Nierenberg worked out the codon assignments within a decade or so of the double helical structure of DNA by Watson and Crick (1). Little appreciated because a code, as far as we know, is something Nature had never produced – a symbolic mapping of the physical chemistry of the 20 amino acid side chains. The Morse code is a widely appreciated example. Like inheritance, the genetic code is a property of biology.