The Jaina Doctrine of Karma And The Science Of Genetics: Founders of Genetic Codes

The concept of genetic code was anticipated by the American Biologist James D. Watson and the British Biologist francis H.C. Crick as an extrapolation of the structural model of DNA that they proposed in 1953. For this work, they, along with the British Biophysicist Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the 1963 noble prize in physiology or medicine.

The concept was bolstered by the indirect evidence for a messanger RNA put forward by two french noble laureates, immediately corroborated by the demonstration of a message functioning RNA by Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and Matthew. S. Meselson with in the same year. Marshall Nirenberg (1968 noble prize winner) opened a door to a direct attack on the code by showing that a synthetic RNA containing only the nucleotide chain UUUU..... could function as a message for the synthesis of amino acid phenylalanine.

Subsequent by many other biochemist, especially the Americans Severo Ochoa (1959 Noble prize winner) and Gobind Khurane (1968 Noble Prize winner) using more complex synthetic messages pinned down the code as a triplet code. Using the fact that the triplet UUU coded for phenylalanine as a starting point, many investigators went to determine the code and by 1968 the entire code was broken see table-1.

The successful work on the genetic code led to research on the artificial synthesis of RNA molecules that would code for specific protein synthesis. The American Biologist, Charles Yan of sky supported the code breaker's work from completely different line of research. He showed that the code was corroborated by the patterns of mutation and of recombination of mutants effecting single amino acids of the protein tryptophane synthetase in the Bacterium E. Coli.^[71]