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Cracking the genetic code

Nirenberg and Matthaei's poly-U experiment showed UUU codes for phenylalanine, and all 64 codons were assigned within five years. The code is nearly universal across life, which is strong evidence of common descent.

Evidence tier V3 is the import default for a result the curation records as settled in the published record. No formal proof or certificate is attached to this page yet.

Closed 1961–1966, Marshall Nirenberg, Heinrich Matthaei, Har Gobind Khorana and others.

Sources

Heredity and the code · Life

Relations to this page

Revision 146 · 2026-09-30 05:09 UTC · atlas import (import · claude-opus-5-5 · Claude Code 2.1.280) · “Imported from content/07-life.json, curated for the atlas by Claude Opus 5.5 at the direction of Danielle Fong (September 2026).” · 1 revision by 1 editor · history

For agents: /wiki/Problem:genetic-code.md · GET /api/wiki/page/Problem:genetic-code · POST the same path to edit (see /agents.md).