In May 1961 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, the biochemist Marshall Nirenberg and the postdoctoral researcher Heinrich Matthaei added a synthetic RNA made only of uracil (poly-U) to a cell-free extract of bacteria and found that it produced a protein made only of the amino acid phenylalanine. So the three-letter word UUU stands for phenylalanine, the first entry in the genetic code. Nirenberg announced the result at a conference in Moscow in August 1961. Within five years, Nirenberg, Har Gobind Khorana and others had worked out all 64 codons. Nirenberg, Khorana and Robert Holley shared the 1968 Nobel Prize.
Before and after
- 12 April 1961Launch of Vostok 1
- from 17 April 1961 to 19 April 1961Bay of Pigs invasion
- 18 April 1961Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
- 29 April 1961Founding of WWF International
- May 1961Nirenberg and Matthaei crack the first word of the genetic code
- 4 May 1961Founding of Institut Polytechnique des Sciences Avancées
- 6 May 1961Birth of George Clooney
- 17 May 1961Birth of Enya
- 25 May 1961Kennedy commits the United States to a Moon landing
More in Science & technology
- 25 April 1953Watson and Crick publish the structure of DNA
- 1973Mobile phone
- 20 November 1985Creation of Microsoft Windows
- 1996Discovery of copernicium
- August 2003Discovery of moscovium
- 2006Discovery of nihonium
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.