Re: Fermi's Paradox and DNA

On 2006-01-24, Ralph Hartley <hartley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The assignment of amino acids to three base DNA/RNA codes comes to mind.
>
> The coding is arbitrary (more or less, there may be some constraints),
> it is determined by transfer RNAs. One part of the tRNA contains the 3
> letter code, and a *different* part controls which amino acid gets loaded.
>
> It is also *very* strongly conserved, all life on earth uses the same
> encoding.

This is almost, but not quite true. There are some species that use a
slightly different variants -- the extremophiles that live near the thermal
vents on the ocean floor are one example, mitochondria are another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code#Variations

--
Aaron Denney
-><-

.

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