It was early in the morning on the 27th of May in 1961 when a young American biochemist named Marshall Nirenberg was able to read the first word in the
Khorana figured out how to synthesise different bits of DNA and RNA – called polynucleotides – that were important to understand the composition of genetic codes.
It was early in the morning on the 27th of May in 1961 when a young American biochemist named Marshall Nirenberg was able to read the first word in the genetic code of life. Like all great leaps, Marshall had to stand on the shoulders of genius to accomplish the task of reading the instructions for life on Earth.
By the middle 1950s, science had proven DNA is what species pass on to create future generations, but no one knew how. Chemically speaking, life was primarily water and protein. Proteins were combinations of 20 different amino acids linked in chains, but how did they get in the proper order? Today we know changing a single amino acid in the chain of almost 600 that makes hemoglobin protein can cause diseases like sickle cell anemia. Marshall and other researchers, Heinrich Matthaei, Maxine Singer, Robert Martin and Har Gobind Khorana, worked to crack the code in under five years, a problem most researchers thought would last a lifetime.