CHAPTER 39

The Genetic Code

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The Rosetta stone is inscribed with a decree issued by the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 305 B.C. to 30 B.C. The text is made up of three translations—Greek and two Egyptian scripts (hieroglyphics and demotic script)—of the same passage and enabled scholars to decipher hieroglyphics. The genetic code, deciphered by biochemists, allows the translation of nucleic acid information into protein sequence.

Many people spend hours weight training, with the goal of sculpting their bodies. Vigorous weight training can double or triple the size of a muscle. These people are altering their behavior so as to alter the biochemistry of their muscles; they are stimulating muscle-protein synthesis.

Protein synthesis is called translation because the four-letter alphabet of nucleic acids is translated into the entirely different twenty-letter alphabet of proteins. We begin our study of protein synthesis by examining the code that links these two alphabets and the machinery that is required to interpret the code.

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