Word: rna
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Modified Proteins. The higher brain functions of memory and reasoning, Hyden hypothesizes, are achieved by the way the neuron alters the protein it forms. Each neuron contains millions of molecules of ribonucleic acid (RNA). Each of these molecules is chemically keyed by the arrangement of its internal building blocks. These molecules dictate, in accordance with their keys, the nature of the proteins that the neuron forms, in cooperation with the glial cells. The modified proteins are the chemical representations of thoughts...
Chemical Mutation. Tsugita and Fra«n-kel-Conrat worked with TMU, a virus that causes mosaic disease in tobacco plants. TMU's structure is extremely simple. All it has is a core of coiled-up RNA surrounded by a cylindrical jacket made of protein molecules. Tsugita and Fraenkel-Conrat first stripped off the jacket by use of a protein-dissolving chemical. Then they treated the naked RNA with nitrous acid, which is known to affect the RNA's code-carrying bases. After the nitrous acid had. acted, the RNA was enabled to clothe itself...
...quite the same as the protein of normal virus. And in the specialized world of biochemistry this was exciting news. Other chemically induced mutations have shown themselves as changes of behavior, which cannot be described chemically. Now the effect of the change in the virus's RNA can be seen as a definite chemical change in its protein...
Changing the Code. The report from Tsugita and Fraenkel-Conrat went little farther than that. But Nobel Prizewinning Wendell M. Stanley, head of Berkeley's Virus Laboratory, believes that the original action of the nitrous acid was to change one kind of RNA base into another...
...other words. RNA's genetic code, while still far from unbroken, has at least been changed...