Use of Polymers with Defined Sequences (Heteropolymers)

Use of Polymers with Defined Sequences (Heteropolymers)

Use of Polymers with Defined Sequences (Heteropolymers) -

A few years later Khorana combinined organic synthetic and enzymatic techniques to synthesize RNA polymers having defined sequences.

Combination of C and U nucleotides led to the synthesis of the polynucleotide CUCUCUCUC . This contains alternating CUC and UCU codons.

Ribosomes code this message to form a polypeptide of alternating leucine and serine amino acids. Completely synthetic systems has been produced in the laboratory.

Combining U and A results in the formation of a dinucoletide UA. Combining two such dinucleotides produces a tetranucleotide UAUA.

Adding two such tetranucleotides results in UAUAUAUA. By further addition of such chains it is possible to obtain a polynucleotide which contains alternating U and A nucleotides indefinitely:

UAUAUAUA - UAUAUA. This polynucleotide contains the codons DAU and AUA repeated several times. These codons code for tyrosine and isoleucine, respectively.

The polypeptide chain produced contains alternating tyrosine and isoleucine, mits. It is possible to combine a VA doublet with a UC doublet to yield UAUC.

By adding such tetranucleotides it is possible to get a short chain with message UAUCUAUCUAUC.

This can be resolved into the codons UAU, CUA, UCU and AUC, which code for tyrosine, leucine, serine and isoleucine, respectively.

It is thus possible that in the future, polynucleotides coding for any desired protein may be synthesized.

This in effect would be the artificial production of genes by synthetic methods.

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Third Base Deciphering the Code Use of Polymer Containing a Single Type of Nucleotide (Homopolymers) Use of Mixed Polymers with Random Sequences (Heteropolymers) Use of Mixed Polymers with Defined Sequences (Heteropolymers) Use of Trinucleotides in Filter Binding (Minimessengers) Genetic Code is Universal Colinearity of Gene Structure and its Polypeptide Product

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