Genetic code cracked
Desciframiento del código genético
- Date
- 1961-1966 · confidence high
- Place
- NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, United States
- Credited to
- Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich Matthaei, Har Gobind Khorana, Robert Holley; Crick and Brenner (triplet code)
- People
- 👤 Har Gobind Khorana1922–2011👤 J. Heinrich Matthaei1929–2025👤 Marshall Warren Nirenberg1927–2010👤 Robert W. Holley1922–1993👤 Sydney Brenner1927–2019
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Poly-U produced polyphenylalanine (UUU = Phe, 1961); within five years all 64 codons were assigned. The code turned out to be almost universal, evidence of the common origin of life.
Nobel Prize 1968.
What it led to
- direct reading of genes into proteins
- gene synthesis and synthetic biology
- prediction of proteins from DNA sequences
- genomics
Built on
Made possible
- First chemical synthesis of a gene (yeast alanine tRNA)1970
- Selenocysteine1974
- First synthetic gene circuits (toggle switch and repressilator)2000
- chemical synthesis of genes
- heterologous expression