The era nowdays is the era of cracking the code!
But did you know that an Indian was responsible for cracking one of the most difficult codes ever!?
The genetic code!
The ATCG and the AUCG are the codes which make the whole universe!
The basic gene is just an amalgamation of these four codes!
To think that the Indian scientist who cracked the code had his early schooling in a school which had classrooms under a tree!
The scientist was Har Gobind Khorana!
He was a pioneering Indian-American biochemist who co-won the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his groundbreaking work in deciphering the genetic code!
Alongside Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley, he helped prove how the four-letter chemical alphabet of DNA dictates the creation of proteins, laying the absolute foundation for modern biotechnology and genetic engineering!
Khorana built custom RNA strands with specific, repeating chemical patterns.
By observing the amino acid strings they produced, his lab helped crack the “dictionary of life”—showing exactly how three-letter combinations (codons) spell out specific proteins. He also helped identify the “stop codons” that tell a cell when a protein chain is finished!
In 1972, Khorana went a step further by chemically synthesizing the world’s very first fully functional artificial gene outside of a living organism!
His early methods for assembling DNA and RNA fragments chemically paved the way for modern genome sequencing, PCR, and contemporary CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technologies!
So which are the four codes!
Well the DNA code: Uses four bases—Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C), and Guanine (G). In DNA pairing, A binds with T, and C binds with G.
While the RNA Code: Uses four bases—Adenine (A), Uracil (U), Cytosine (C), and Guanine (G)—where Uracil replaces Thymine. In RNA transcription and pairing, A binds with U, and C binds with G!
These four interplay and CREATE you me and everyone else! The magic of GENES! All created by initially sitting under a tree!
Now of course if you sit under a tree you will be, well regarded with suspicion! Then again you do not have to suspect the acting prowess of Ramesh Aravind!
Now try craking the sleep code!
Shub ratri…
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