The Nirenberg and Matthaei experiment was a scientific experiment performed on May 15, 1961, by Marshall W. Nirenberg and his post doctoral fellow, Heinrich J. Matthaei. The experiment cracked the genetic code by using nucleic acid homopolymers to translate specific amino acids.
The Nirenberg and Leder experiment was a scientific experiment performed in 1964 by Marshall W. Nirenberg and Philip Leder. The experiment elucidated the triplet nature of the genetic code and allowed the remaining ambiguous codons in the genetic code to be deciphered.
The Marshall W. Nirenberg Papers Public Reactions to the Genetic Code, 1961-1968
Nevertheless, the problem of the genetic code at least in the restricted one-dimensional sense (the linear correlation of the nucleotide sequence of polynucleotides with that of the amino acid sequence of polypeptides) would appear to have been solved.
In the years after 1953, scientists scrambled to be the first to decipher the genetic code. In an attempt to make the race interesting, theoretical physicist and astronomer George Gamow came up with a plan. He organized an exclusive club, the “RNA Tie Club,” in which each member would put forward ideas as to how the nucleotide bases were translated into proteins in the body’s cells. His club had twenty hand-picked members, one for each amino acid, and each wore a tie marked with the symbol of that amino acid. The group—which did not include Marshall Nirenberg—met several times during the 1950s but did not manage to be the first to break the code.
Genetic memory resides in specific molecules of nucleic acid. The information is encoded in the form of a linear sequence of bases of 4 varieties that corresponds to sequences of 20 varieties of amino acids in protein. The translation from nucleic acid to protein proceeds in a sequential fashion according to a systematic code with relatively simple rules. Each unit of nucleic acid defines the species of molecule to be selected, its position relative to the previous molecule selected, and the time of the event relative to the previous event. The nucleic acid therefore functions both as a template for other molecules and as a biological clock. The information is encoded and decoded in the form of a one-dimensional string. The polypeptide translation product then folds upon itself in a specific manner predetermined by the amino acid sequence, forming a complex, three-dimensional protein.
Scads of scientists. Two Nobel Prizes. Isn’t consensus science grand?
“…the fact is that present life requires semiotic control by coded gene strings.”
– Howard H. Pattee
Nucleic Acid Synthesis in the Study of the Genetic Code
Mung, are you going to list or quote every pulication ever that refers to the genetic code as “the genetic code”?
Let’s just get to the meat and save time. Suppose the genetic code is a code, what does that in your view entail?
This is what I want to know.
Also, Mung – have you actually read the paper from which that Pattee quotation is taken?
Rumraket:
Lizzie:
Thirded.
As far as we know Mung does not even support ID. So what relevance any of this has to anything I don’t know.
Mung,
I’ll ask you the same as I asked fmm.
Would Marshall W. Nirenberg and his post doctoral fellow, Heinrich J. Matthae agree with you (presumably) that codes are designed, and therefore DNA is designed by an intelligent designer?
If not, what’s the point in all this?
Larry Moran and Crick both say DNA is a code. Would they agree with you that as all codes are designed DNA is an intelligently designed code?
If not, what’s the point in all this?
Don’t you think it’s about time ID did some actual, you know, scientific work to prove it’s claims?
DNA is a designed code because……….
Where “…..” is your supporting evidence.
UD is already like some weird cargo-cult where they take other people’s work and highlight “telic” words in it that they think shows that work supports ID.
Intelligent Design – taking science that nobody disputes and warping it to a theistic agenda.
Mung apparently thinks a host turned into human flesh.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/did-the-dna-change-randomly-or-by-design
sean@UD
Mung@UD
What is the “truth” Mung? Did the DNA change into human DNA or were you just making a comment with no substance and, like WJM, don’t actually have an opinion on what other people are claiming?
Did the host turn into human flesh Mung? Yes or no.
When do we get to Part xxx, the one in which Mung identifies the characteristics of ‘a real code’, and presents some actual argument as to why one should agree the GC is one?
Even I call the genetic code a code. Have done for years. But there are significant aspects in which it isn’t. It’s not symbolic. It’s not representational. It’s not communicative. None of which matter one jot, other than for purposes of internet argumentation.
That’ll never happen. Like many IDists Mung is careful not to go on the record about things they might be wrong about. Better to sit on the fence so you can be “right” about everything then take a position and argue for it.
If one put a bunch of reagents in a test tube and consistently produced a particular output from a particular input, would one call that a code? Poly-U produces Poly-Phe in the presence of ribosomes and the rest of the translational gubbins. If that was the only RNA-protein system, we wouldn’t be saying ‘look – UUU is the code for Phe!’, any more than acid+base is the code for salt+water. But it turns out you can stick poly-A, poly-C, poly-G in and get 3 more different monotonous peptides out. And it further turned out that what was actually happening was that the cell-free fraction had multiple tRNAs in there each charged with distinct amino acids. Given such a system, the binding energy of Watson-Crick base pairing does the rest. This energy actually helps drive the formation of the peptide bond. You don’t get peptide bonding if the binding is weak. The binding is always strongest between fully complementary codon-anticodon pairs. Which may make it look as if the codon/anticodon ‘represents’ the amino acid on the other end of that most strongly bound to the currently exposed triplet. But it doesn’t really. It’s all done with magnets.
“It’s in the AARS’s”, one may object. They are the ‘lookup table’. But they aren’t. (On a technicality , this tends to be called ‘the second genetic code’, not the first).
There are simply 20 enzymes with tight amino acid specificity and slightly looser tRNA specificity (many don’t even ‘look’ at the anticodon, but at some other distinctive part of the tRNA). Again, it’s thermodynamics. Of course thermodynamics does not determine directly the association between an AARS’s two substrates. But there are two physically-linked sites on each enzyme that have specificity for two components of the physically-linked tRNA-amino acid complex. So, although people correctly say there is (probably) no chemical ‘law’ that generates the associations, they are nonetheless physically bound together, both in the same enzyme and subsequently on the same tRNA. If one side of a piece of paper always has something specific on the other, that’s more than just some ‘symbolic’ association. It’s physical. Heads does not represent tails.
Mung quotes Pattee:
Another quote from Pattee:
http://binghamton.academia.edu/HowardPattee/Papers/894698/Irreducible_and_complementary_semiotic_forms
Another nice quote from Pattee (from the source of Mung’s own quote):
And a bonus quote for kairosfocus and Barry:
Mung has established he considers Pattee a reliable authority via the OP. I wonder on what basis he will reject their opinions he disagrees with.
Just noticed this in the OP:
So would Mung accept the consensus that life evolved, and by purely ‘mechanical’ means without the intervention of a designer – a view held by numerous Nobel Prize winners in a relevant field, no less? That would indeed be grand.
Just done a Google search for ‘genetic code’ and came up with 31.7 million hits. 31.7 million! Makes you think. Must be a term in common usage, then. That would explain why it kept coming up in exams.
I know Mung bailed on his first “code” thread. What is the probability he’ll man up and provide his definitions of “code” and “real code’ in this one? I give it zero point nil.
Adapa,
Well, he won’t now, will he? 😉
But it doesn’t seem that responses to the first were read before The Posting Of The Second. No-one disputes that the term has a legitimate and widespread use.
I find creationists are “Read only” in that regard. They have an opinion, and that’s that. So they feel no need to bother to read responses to an OP they created, it’ll make no difference anyway.
The arrogance of thinking you know it all continues to astound.
I don’t see what the difficulty is.
Code=goddidit.
that was easy.
4th.
These people don’t have views. They just have regurgitated talking points.
Yes. I’m reading a book that contains seventeen of his papers. I have one paper left to go and will probably read it today.
Could someone remind me why I ought to take Code Denialism (and Code Denialists) seriously?
Mung,
It’s entirely up to you what you take seriously. It seems ill-mannered to make a case and not defend it, but that is merely my worthless opinion.
so why did you pick that quote from Pattee, out of the context in which it was written, to make a point that seems diametrically opposite to your own?
Well, the point you seem to be be making. tbh I’m still not sure what point you are trying to make, because you haven’t said.
Could you now clarify what it is?
Tsssk, Mung. Folks have quoted the same paper as you. Stay ambiguous, though, it’ll limit the need for back-peddling.
Elizabeth,
The problem appears not to be that no-one says it isn’t a ‘true code’, but that some at TSZ (possibly only me) do. Nobel prize-winners are lined up to put me in my place.
Specifically, the preceding phrase is:
which explains the otherwise slightly odd inclusion of “present” in your quotelet.
And I agree with you, in the sense in which you define “true code” and I suspect the lined up Nobel prize-winners would do the same, given the same definition.
It is not a symbolic system.
Does Mung think it is?
It might help progress ID if you can demonstrate unambiguously that DNA could only have been designed.
If you don’t want to take it seriously, then why have you started two threads on it?
Kairosfocus goes off the deep end again over at UD, flinging every ID argument he can think of at the wall in the hope that it sticks. In it, he includes a graphic that calls tRNA ‘taxi-cabs’. 🙂
I’m all metaphor-ed out. Literally.
So he can preen at UD, or at least that’s what the evidence seems to suggest so far.
Hi, I’m Allan and I’m a Code Denialist. Sort of.
What I don’t quite get is the bitterness. If someone doesn’t think the genetic code is a ‘real’ (representational) code … so what? I have no parallel problem with people who think it is. I just think they’re wrong.
I tell ’em why I think what I think, but I might just as well lean on the ‘@’ key for 5 minutes, since I merely evince haughty dismissal – no-one wants to read what a Code Denialist has to say (sob!).
Not only you.
But I think a mountain is being made of a mole hill. I don’t see a point to Mung’s two threads on this.
Divide and conquer. If Mung can set people against authorities, that supports ID as “look, they can’t even agree amongst themselves”.
Fmm went silent when it was pointed out to him that the people he was quoting would have fundamentally disagreed with him, and even he could not twist that. I imagine going on past form Mung won’t even address that point.
As such, I have to wonder why if Mung won’t even participate in the threads he creates, he should be trusted to create more.
Well, i’ve got to admire Kf’s sticktoitiveness as … something … worthwhile in exactly the same sense as the guy who single-handedly wrapped the world’s biggest ball of twine. Which, in one of life’s odd little coincidences, is in Darwin, MN. The guy wrapped fours hours every day for 29 years.
I mean, how can you not admire that level of committed effort?
Except, when he was done, F. Johnson at least had a really impressive ball of twine. When he’s done, what does Kf have?
I don’t know whether to laugh or weep for him.
Why not.
Take your at bats if you wish. Don’t if you don’t.
It’s fine. It’s all fine.
You’d have a hard time weeping for him I feel given some exposure to some of his not very PC ideas….
It’s just crappy to see bible OP after bible OP and then threads created that he does not even participate in but uses as some sort of stick to poke people with.
Yes, he was talking about present life. Life as we know it. Not sure why you find that odd. Do you think I somehow changed the meaning of what he wrote?
Here it is again.
“…the fact is that present life requires semiotic control by coded gene strings.”
Why don’t you all contact him and tell him how wrong he is?
I’m surprised that Allan didn’t jump on this. It seems to line up with his genome controls the organism thesis.
If we are asked to take you seriously, Mung, would you please get to the point.
Or make one.
I think you’re missing the point. I should not have to “make the case.” Code Denialism is absurd and constitutes an extreme minority view that appears to be limited to a far corner of the internet and to have more to do with being anti-ID than with skepticism.
Whatever.
If that’s the drugs talking, please share. Do you have anything for bitterness?
🙂
If we are asked to take you seriously, Mung, would you please get to the point.
Why do you think this is important?
Mung,
The position you are painting as ‘Code Denialism’ does not exist. I don’t deny that the term ‘genetic code’ has a long and venerable history. I don’t deny that what is called ‘the genetic code’ is, in many respects, very like a symbolic code. But it is not symbolic. This is hardly worth getting in a flap over, but I don’t see why you find it such an objectionable stance. I don’t take it in order to be ‘anti-ID’, it simply flows from my understanding of codes and the mechanics of translation/transcription. As far as ID is concerned, a constructional analogy would be closer to what goes on, but I know the field attracts a lot of programmers (who often equivocate the symbolic meaning with the programming one).
I have explained my reasoning in several quite lengthy posts. That it may seem a minority position is neither here nor there. I don’t think it is, in fact, but it would make no difference to me if it was.
Nope, don’t get that either.
I must admit, this discussion takes me back. Beadle and Tatum, Avery, Nirenberg, Leder, Gamow, Crick – those are all very familiar names to me. It’s not as if I am unfamiliar with the elucidation of the code/’code’. The race, the history, the elegance of the experimentation – this really fired my imagination as an undergrad. So much so that I switched my major from zoology.
This is one of those cases where incompetent philosophy destroys reason and sense.
When IDists say DNA is a code, they are implying that it has grammar and syntax, and new statements can be made that make sense. They are implying that someone smart enough and knowledgeable enough can design code statements.
Proving this would make a nice ID research project, but it will never happen.