"More about the chemistry of heredity"

Date:: [1956]

Reference:: PP/CRI/H/2/8

Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: "More about the chemistry of heredity". Source: Wellcome Collection.

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analogy is that a protein is like a paragraph in our own 26 letter language ( similar to the 20 amino acids) and the corresponding piece of RNA is like the same paragraph in the morse code, though of course the morse code has three symbols - a dot, a dash and a space - whereas RIJA has four sorts of nucleotides. There are grave technical difficultés in studying the nucleotides sequences of RiîA, but there is one place where one might make a start - namely at the ends. Suppose one could remove a few nucleotides from one of the enxds of the RUA chain in the virus, and that, by good luck, the virus was still infective. Would it produce progeny having an amino acid missing at one end of the protein molecule ? VTnat a wonderful experiment, you might say, if only it could be done — but ther^that is just what we were saying a year ago about the experiment which Dr. Fraenkal-Conrat has now so brilliantly carried out.