Genetic code in mRNA seems to be very complex, energy efficient and optimally organized
"the man saw his new red car"
However, if a ribosome starts translating this sentence one letter too late, the sentence would read:
"hem ans awh isn ewr edc ar"
In the case of the genetic code, this phenomenon is called 'out-of-frame' translation. Sanne Boersma, researcher at the Hubrecht Institute explains: "As illustrated by the example sentence, out-of-frame translation has a big effect on the protein and usually results in a protein that behaves differently and can damage the cell." Until now, it was unclear how the ribosome knows where to start translating the code, and how often the ribosome gets it wrong.
A big surprise
The researchers discovered that out-of-frame translation happens surprisingly frequently. In extreme cases, almost half of all the proteins that were built, used a different reading frame or code than the expected code. These surprising findings show that the genetic information stored in our DNA is far more complex than previously thought. Based on the new study, our DNA likely encodes thousands of previously unknown proteins with unknown functions. Sanne Boersma: "Because of our study, we can now ask very important questions: what do all these new proteins do? Do they have important functions in our body or are they waste side-products of translation that can damage our cells?" "
My comment: Scientists have thought that genetic code in mRNA is limited to certain short sequences, so called codons. These newest discoveries point out that this is not the case. Every codon can be a start codon. What the article didn't emphasize, is the cell's ability to produce a huge variety of different RNA molecules by transcribing just one DNA strand. The genetic code is poly-functional, overlapping, embedded and multi-layered information. It's so optimally organized that it's clearly designed by God. Don't get lost my friends.
