On the Principles of Nucleic Acid — Protein Interaction

Abstract

The difficulty of establishing recognition bet­ween partners with different molecular “languages”, proteins and nucleic acids is by-passed by two mecha­nisms, in which the principle of coupling factors of opposite character, unity and diversity, integrated in one single molecular structure is operative. For free aminoacids it is the adaptor mechanism, the anti-codon of tRNA playing a dual role. In the protein-DNA interaction hydrogen bonds are established with the components of the common, ever-repeating peptide bond. A kind of “recognition code” can be formulated.