Lecture 26 Flashcards
How many amino acids are there?
20
each has a different radical group
Describe the structure of an amino acid.
a carbon bound to…
- H
- amino group
- carboxyl group
- radical group
type of bond joining the amino acids
peptide
what is the protein’s primary structure
the amino acid sequence
secondary structure of protein
the chain of amino acids folds on itself
- alpha helix
- beta pleated sheet
tertiary structure of protein
the secondary structure folds further
quaternary structure of protein
joining of multiple subunits
Proteins are produced during…
translation
triplet code
the idea that 3 nucleotides on mRNA are used to specify 1 amino acid
Why did early researchers devise the triplet code?
Knowing there were many amino acids, this is the only way the 4 bases could produce the enough amino acids
Francis Crick
- proposed that the code would be read in a nonoverlapping manner
Brenner and Crick
established that a codon consists of 3 non-overlapping nts
Nirenberg and Mattaei
- first to determine that a specific RNA sequence coded for a specific amino acid
Nonoverlapping
need a 3 letter codon to provide for all 20 amino acids
Nirenberg and Mattaei experiment
- used a cell tree extract to provide miscellaneous molecules needed for translation and added an RNA molecule that contained uracil and all 20 amino acids
- made different amino acids radioactive in 20 different tubes with 14C
- allowed protein to be produced and checked if radioactive
- since mRNA contained only Uracil, the codons would be UUU repeating over and over
- polyUUU only produced in phenylalanine
- repeated fr polyC, polyA, did not work with polG
determined coding sequence for 3 codons
Triplet Binding Assay
- Nirenberg and Leder
- used to deduce the rest of the genetic code
Triplet Binding Assay process
- charged tRNA, ribosome, and trinucleotide bind and do not go through filter
1. set up 20 reaction tubes for each possible codon with different radioactive amino acid with trinucleotide, ribosome, and charged tRNAs
2. allow binding
3. filter out unbound amino acids
4. check if radioactive
only had radioactivity on filter paper when the trinucleotide was the codon for that amino acid
encoded 61 of 64 codons using this technique
The code is…
- unambiguous
- degenerate
- containing stop/stop punctuation
- without internal punctuation
- almost universal
unambiguous
a specific codon always codes for a specific amino acid
degenerate
there is more than one codon that codes for the same amino acid
stop codons
UAAA
UAG
UGA
start codon
AUG
no internal punctuation
mRNA is read beginning with the start codon without skipping any bases
almost universal
the code is almost always the same