History
The existence of tRNA was first hypothesized by Francis Crick, based on the assumption that there must exist an adapter molecule capable of mediating the translation of the RNA alphabet into the protein alphabet. Significant research on structure was conducted in the early 1960s by Alex Rich and Don Caspar, two researchers in Boston, the Jacques Fresco group in Princeton University and a United Kingdom group at King's College London. In 1965, Robert W. Holley of Cornell University reported the primary structure and suggested three secondary structures. The cloverleaf structure was ascertained by several other studies in the following years and was finally confirmed using X-ray crystallography studies in 1974. Two independent groups, Kim Sung-Hou working under Alexander Rich and a British group headed by Aaron Klug, published the same crystallography findings within a year.
Read more about this topic: Transfer RNA
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)