Francis Crick proposed the 'adaptor hypothesis' for the function ...

Question

Francis Crick proposed the 'adaptor hypothesis' for the function of tRNA. Why did he choose that description?

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone welcome back. Let's look at our next question. It says according to Francis crick's adapter hypothesis, which of the following is an adapter molecule. Let's think about what this adapter hypothesis was. Um recall from our content video that as scientists began to explore and try to understand how genetic information was stored and how that led to all the functional proteins and things going on in the cell. Uh The key question was as it became clear that genetic information was stored in nucleic acids rather than proteins. How was that information encoded nucleic acid um going to specify the amino acids that make up the proteins in the cell. And in the interest of that, put up this definition here, Creek postulated that there must exist a small molecule to precisely recognize and bind the M. RNA sequences while proteins are being synthesized to function as a bridge between amino acids and nucleic acids. So he didn't know what that was. But he hypothesized that this bridge molecule must exist because before that it was previously assumed that the amino acids are too different from nucleic acids and that would be structurally impossible for them to bind the DNA. So quick hypothesize and adapter hypothesis that there must be some sort of molecule that would allow this to happen. And of course as we know from our studies of transcription and translation that that molecule is choice D. T. R. N. A. A small molecule that combined to the M. RNA code on and attached to an amino acid and bring a specific amino acid over in protein synthesis. So again the adapter molecule that fulfills creeks theoretical molecule from his adapter hypothesis is choice D t r n. A. As that bridge between amino acids and nucleic acids see you in the next video.

Francis Crick proposed the 'adaptor hypothesis' for the function of tRNA. Why did he choose that description?

Key Concepts

Adaptor Hypothesis

tRNA Structure and Function

Genetic Code

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