Title:

Some Footnotes on Protein Synthesis: A Note for the RNA Tie Club

Creator:

Crick, Francis, 1916-2004
Brenner, Sydney

Date:

December 1959

Description:

In this privately circulated paper, Crick and Brenner refined Crick's original theory that amino acids are captured and assembled into a polypeptide chain by adaptor molecules according to instructions provided by messenger RNA. The adaptor molecules consisted of soluble RNA (called transfer RNA, or tRNA by the mid-1960s) and protein.. In the second part of the paper Crick and Brenner tried to resolve complications that arose from the assumption, then widely held, that ribosomal RNA was the messenger. Especially puzzling was the fact that ribosomal RNA appeared in only two lengths, whereas the polypeptide chains for which RNA coded were of widely varying lengths. Within two years, this complication was resolved when it became clear that the ribosome was an inert head for reading off the sequence of bases on messenger RNA, which in turn was identified as its own distinct form of RNA.

Original Repository:

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers

Location:

Box: 80. Folder: PP/CRI/H/2/34

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. and http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/

Genre:

Articles
Drafts (documents)

Subject:

Molecular Biology and RNA

Format:

Text

Extent:

9 pages

Language:

English

Legacy Source Citation:

Original Repository. Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers. 11646. URL. http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/

Legacy ID:

SCBBFV

NLM ID:

101584582X66

Profiles Collection:

The Francis Crick Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584582X66

Story Section:

Deciphering the Genetic Code, 1958-1966