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
What, my position that fmm thinks codes are designed? Your responses at this point are just autonomic reactions huh? Given I can quote him on this you perhaps may want to reconsider.
Is there a list of what mother nature can and cannot do then?
Right, that’s your view. I get this But WHY do you think this? Surely not just because it’s called a “code”!
For example, do you think that (i) tree rings represent years of age so (ii) an intelligent agency must have mapped tree rings to years millenia before human beings came to understand the connection? Make the argument already!
Alan, if people could not have done it then we infer it was some other intelligent agency. Mother nature doesn’t magically get the capability to produce codes just because we weren’t around.
Science 101, Alan
Tree rings are not a code. The CD that data is placed on is not the code.
Look, if you don’t like the design inference just show us that mother nature is capable- step up ans actually support your position. Whining isn’t going to do it.
Mother Nature can’t even produce something as relatively simple as Stonehenge- stones, yes; Stonehenge, no.
Frankie, Science 101 requires you to first make the case that such items as the genetic code actually DO require an intelligent agency to have come into being. That’s the question. Don’t simply beg it.
What makes you say that stones are less complicated than Stonehenge?
Grow up- you said that they think it is a code just not an intelligently designed code.
Why can’t mother nature produce Stonehenges?
The burden is not on me. It is YOU who must show the necessity of an intelligence where you think there must be one. How is the genetic code different from the attraction of electrons to protons required to make stones?
All of our observations and experiences support the claim that codes only come from intelligent agencies. The design inference comes from our knowledge of cause and effect relationships. You wouldn’t even know how to model mother nature producing a code.
Was that supposed to answer my question?
ETA: I’ll answer yours anyhow. I suppose nature could produce something that looked just like Stonehenge. But unless it were there to represent something it would be essentially different. Why do you think the genetic code is more like Stonehenge than the non-representative copy?
If you have to ask that question then you are not qualified for this discussion. The burden is on you to show that mother nature can produce a code. Yours is the position that doesn’t have any evidence.
It shows that your question is moot.
Talk about whining. If you don’t know the answer to a question, you could just say “Beats me” or something along those lines. You obviously have no idea why a code (without begging the question) must be intelligently designed.
You’re prolific (if not original) with insults, though. So, there is that going for you! 🙂
No one cares what you suppose, walto. And the genetic code is more complex than Stonehenge.
The stone is more complex than stonehenge too.
Codes must be intelligently designed because mother nature does not do arbitrary constructs. Mother nature follows the laws and laws do not produce codes.
In all of our experiences and observations only intelligent agencies can produce codes.
Context, fridge-repair man, context.
So one stone is more complex than several stones placed in a specific arrangement? Really?
I got the context right, whiny boy
OK, an actually substantive post. Thank you. Now, what is an “arbitrary construct’? And what is your reason for thinking that the genetic code is arbitrary?
walto,
There isn’t any physiochemical connection between the mRNA codons and the amino acids they represent.
This is only knowable if you have a full knowledge of the laws of physics.
What is the solution that unifies the quantum and macroscopic worlds?
Read a biology or biochemistry textbook. There isn’t any law that determines the pairings. Buy a dictionary, at least
So chemistry is not involved at any level then?
Apart from, well, chemistry, right?
Science is tentative and you have an opening to jump in and refute the claim. But everyone knows that you won’t because you have no idea how to start.
The arrangement of the constitutents of each stones is more complex than the arrangement of the stones in Stonehenge. Really. But I take it you believe that the “arbitrariness” of the arrangement of the stones in Stonehenge requires that it must have had a designer, while stones are not arbitrary in that way. If I’ve got that right, I’d like to know what you think it is about the genetic code that makes it arbitrary in the way that Stonehenge is but the pebble on my desk is not,
There isn’t any chemistry that determines the pairings. Get an education, OM.
I told you what makes the genetic code arbitrary. And all textbooks agree with me.
Grow up
Grow up. The mRNA codons do not become the amino acids via some physiochemical process. mRNA codons represent amino acids.
You are a very angry person.
When you say that there isn’t any law that such-and-such, do you mean that no law has been discovered that such and such or that no law could be discovered that such and such? And if the latter, what do you take to be the essence of lawlikeness that is lacking in the genetic code?
Frankie G:
I get it! We’re supposed to assume our conclusions.
OK – Arbitrary constructs can arise in nature. The evidence? Codes that originated in nature are evident everywhere – particularly in biology! Take the genetic code, for example…
3,1 million dollars await anyone who can show mother nature can produce a code. Until someone grabs the prize it is clear all you can do is bluff.
And when you find evidence for your bald assertion be sure to try to have it published so someone cares.
I’ve moved two posts to guano, and I ask everyone to re-read the rules. It is perfectly possible to discuss these issues without insulting other people’s intelligence or education.
So chemistry is not involved at any level? Good to know.
Typical- get the responder and not the provocateur. You have serious issues
You are a very silly person. If you ever construct a sensible argument I will respond.
So chemistry is involved? But how, where?
Still pending:
Mung, do you disagree with UB’s admissions regarding “semiotic theory?”
How would you answer my last question?
It is of course correct that mRNA codons do not become amino acids. However, whether we use the word “represent” or not depends on how far you want to push the analogy between the translation process and, say the reading of text by an intelligent reader.
What IS the case is that the process is indeed physiochemical. It is the chemical configuration of molecules in the cell that determine the set of tRNA molecules that are produced, and it is that set of tRNA molecules that determine which mRNA codons will end up with which amino acids. Moreover the actual mechanism that connects each codon with which amino acid is “physiochemical”.
So while it’s fine to say, in a sense, that the mRNA codons “represent” an amino acid just as a human reader can “read off” the amino acid sequence by reading a written list of the,mRNA bases, in the cell this “reading” of the “representation” is done directly and chemically, and the mapping of codon to amino acid is determined entirely by the set of tRNA molecules specified in the genome. In contrast, the human reader, could read the mRNA codons in any representative form – letters, numbers, colours, morse code, whatever. For the human reader, the chemistry that makes up the code doesn’t matter. For the cell it is everything.
Like pretty much everyone here, I’m puzzled by your continual use of “represent”.
Suppose we grant, just for the sake of argument, that words in natural languages represent the objects they refer to — so the word “cat” represents the animal, or something like that. (I don’t think this actually makes any sense, in terms of how language works, but whatever.)
We’re supposed to believe that the sequence guanine-adenine-cytosine has the same relationship to aspartic acid that the word “cat” has to the animals — namely, the relationship of representation.
Is that the claim?
I ask because I can see quite a few things badly wrong with the claim, but I want to make sure I’m getting it right.
Your position can’t even explain the existence of cats!
😛
Right — if I understand correctly, it’s a series of homomorphic mappings of physico-chemical structure.
Sometimes we want to say (I think correctly) that animals act able to act purposively in their environments by virtue of having good-enough representations of affordances in their environments.
If codons represent amino acids by virtue of homomorphic mapping of physico-chemical structure, then perhaps we could also say here that neurodynamics represent affordances by virtue of homomorphic mapping of physico-chemical structure — though in the case of brains, various kinds of energetic flux causally mediates affordances and representations.
I would, however, urge the following: if we think of representations as either linguistic or neurodynamic, we will not have a concept of representation that can be used to understand the relation between nucleotide sequences and amino acid sequences, and hence not between genes and proteins.
It’s hard to get Frankie to say anything substantive (easy to elicit insults though), but the argument he made to me did not rest on representation. It fell on “arbitrariness” (or absence of rule-following behavior) instead. There’s dicta there, that such arbitrariness is also exhibited by languages and stuff like Morse code, but the argument doesn’t depend on representation being present in both cases.
I don’t know enough about biology to respond intelligently to the “arbitrary” claim myself. And I couldn’t get anything from Frankie regarding what he/she takes to constitute “law-likeness”–so I leave it to the scientists here to flesh this out, if possible.
walto,
From what I can tell, in Frankie’s sense iron “represents” oxygen by rusting.
That is not my position.
Once again I don’t claim that codes must be the result of intelligent design. I have only pointed out that is true in my limited experience.
peace