Fidelity During Translation of the Genetic Code

Abstract

During the past few years, our laboratory has been interested in factors that determine specificity in translation of the genetic code. Our early studies were concerned with possible species differences in codon assignments, and indicated that to a first approximation the code appeared universal (Weinstein, 1963). More recently we have been interested in the ability of environmental agents to alter the specificity with which nucleotide sequences in mRNA determine amino acid sequences in protein (Friedman and Weinstein, 1964; 1965). We chose the term “fidelity” to designate the precision of this translation process.