Letter from Marshall W. Nirenberg to Francis Crick
Contributor(s):
The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers
Nirenberg, Marshall W.
Crick, Francis, 1916-2004
In this letter Nirenberg reported on the ongoing effort of his laboratory to identify the codons (nucleotide triplets) that specify each of the twenty common amino acids during protein synthesis. (A nucleotide is made of a base and the sugar and phosphate groups of the DNA or RNA backbone to which it binds.) The elucidation of the genetic code was completed the following year, including the identification of three nonsense triplets (mentioned in the letter) that did not code for any amino acid.
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