Week 2 Journal Entry

Week 2 Reading Reflections

1. The biggest discovery I made from the assigned readings for this week was how complex and time consuming it was for Nirenberg and his colleagues to properly decipher the genetic code. Most textbooks I've seen gloss over the history of a research project, but being able to hear this story from a personal account made the reading more insightful.
2. Nirenberg's account was also the most difficult to understand since the many organic chemicals and procedures involved in the research were unfamiliar to me.
3. Nirenberg and his colleagues spent a year synthesizing all 64 trinucleotides and tested each one to see what amino acids were produced.
4. According to Glyn Moody, the four letters of the genetic code (A, C, G, T) can be read in terms of binary code found in computers by swapping "A" with "00", "C" with "01", "G" with "10", and "T" with "11" (Moody 3).

Mpetredi (talk) 14:48, 5 September 2013 (PDT)Mitchell Petredis