Squirrels
and Trees and E Coli
Once the code was solved, and while the sequencing
was being finished, Nirenberg turned to the examination of some questions about what it meant to
have discovered what people referred to as “the
code of life.” One question that particularly
fascinated him was the issue of universality. He
and
his colleagues had done all their experiments with
bacteria. Would the results change if different species were used?
Experiments with toads and guinea pigs showed that the code was almost universal. Nirenberg
later recalled looking out the window of his
office and marveling that he, the tree, and the squirrel should have turned out to be so biologically
similar. |
