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Calculated Composition of a ‘Messenger’ Ribonucleic Acid

Abstract

A SPECIAL type of ribonucleic acid, the ‘messenger’ RNA, has been postulated recently, which is assumed to specify the sequence of the amino-acid constituents of a given protein1. This RNA is said to be made under the control of deoxyribonucleic acid and to mirror the composition and the regularities (base-pairing, etc.)2 of the latter, with uracil substituting for thymine3–6. The existence, in DNA, of a nonoverlapping, ‘degenerate’ code, composed of nucleotide triplets that are ‘read’ from a fixed starting point, has also been put forward7. These advances have been paralleled by the equally recent elaboration of what would seem to be the complete amino-acid code in the form of a series of nucleotido triplets8–11.

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CHARGAFF, E. Calculated Composition of a ‘Messenger’ Ribonucleic Acid. Nature 194, 86–87 (1962). https://doi.org/10.1038/194086a0

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