Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence by Sondra Barrett Phd

Author:Sondra Barrett Phd
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 1604076267
Publisher: Sounds True
Published: 2013-05-01T12:00:00+00:00

— CARL DJERASSI The Bourbaki Gambit

The same four bases that encrypt the genetic code—A, T, C, G—appear throughout the living kingdom.7 Whether a bee or a hippo, an oak tree or a mosquito, everything on this planet uses the same encoding system; it’s only the arrangement of the letters that distinguishes man from mouse. Though the computer holds its vast information in a binary code of 0s and 1s, the more complex DNA code is made of three units called triplets or codons. These encoded base letters signify which of the twenty amino acids is to be used in the building of proteins. There are sixty-four possible combinations of the three letters; all sixty-four are assigned either to amino acids or to start/stop signals. Imagine reading a hodgepodge of letters that encode specific information. You would have to know where to start reading the code and where to stop.

The sequence of these three-letter codons along the gene strand enables the cells to assemble amino acids in the correct order to construct strands of protein or a polypeptide (a small protein).

Here is the three-letter breakdown of a piece of DNA reading AAAATGCGTTCG.

Snippets of this code:

AAA

ATG

CGT

TCG

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