Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Annu Rev Microbiol. 2012;66:27-38. doi: 10.1146/annurev-micro-010312-100615.
2011 marked the fiftieth anniversary of breaking the genetic code in 1961. Marshall Nirenberg, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for his role in deciphering the code, wrote in 2004 a personal account of his research. The race for the code was a competition between the NIH group and Severo Ochoa's laboratory at New York University (NYU) School of Medicine, where I was a graduate student and conducted many of the experiments. I am now 83 years old. These facts prompt me to recall how I, together with Joe Speyer, an instructor in the Department of Biochemistry at NYU, unexpectedly became involved in deciphering the code, which also became the basis of my PhD thesis. Ochoa won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1959 for discovering polynucleotide phosphorylase (PNP), the first enzyme found to synthesize RNA in the test tube. The story of how PNP made the deciphering of the code feasible is recalled here.
2011 年标志着 1961 年破解遗传密码五十周年。因在破译密码方面的贡献而于 1968 年获得诺贝尔生理学或医学奖的美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）科学家马歇尔·尼伦伯格（Marshall Nirenberg）在 2004 年撰写了一篇个人研究报告。密码破解竞赛是 NIH 小组和纽约大学（NYU）医学院塞韦罗·奥乔亚（Severo Ochoa）实验室之间的竞争，我当时是一名研究生，在那里进行了许多实验。我现在已经 83 岁了。这些事实促使我回忆起我是如何与纽约大学生物化学系的讲师乔·斯拜尔（Joe Speyer）一起意外地参与破解密码的，这也成为了我博士论文的基础。奥乔亚因发现多核苷酸磷酸化酶（PNP）而于 1959 年获得诺贝尔生理学或医学奖，这是第一个在试管中发现能合成 RNA 的酶。本文回顾了 PNP 如何使密码破解成为可能的故事。
