The genetic code connects nucleotide sequences to the amino acids used to build proteins. Three nucleotide bases form a codon, allowing an alphabet of four bases to encode the amino acids needed for protein synthesis.
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12:16proteins right and previous iterations of our timeline have talked about how there's the one gene one enzyme hypothesis meaning that the gene creates a single enzyme. But now we've got to go from the DNA alphabet, which is A, T, G, and C. Those are the nucleic acids. We've got to go from that alphabet and translate it to amino acids, which there's 20 of. We've reviewed this before about how you take three neuro um you take three of those nucleotide bases and you create a single amino acid because you need 4 * 4 * 4 to get to 64. If you only have 4 * 4
12:58that's only 16 combinatorically you need three to create a single codon is what it's called. And that code of how to get from DNA to proteins was discovered by these three individuals. Biochemists Marshall Nureburgg Hergo Kurana who's of Indian descent and Robert Holly. They deciphered the universal genetic code at NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, and at the University of Wisconsin Madison and Cornell University. They earned the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. And another example of why these bureaucratic national institutions like the NIH are relevant in combining with
13:38the university ecosystem which we also talked about in part one and how that became a huge enabling layer for many of