this presentation briefly covers the GENETIC CODE.

1. GENETIC CODE

8. Genetic code is continuous and non-overlapping.

9. Genetic code is Universal.

10. Genetic code is Degenerate. >Degeneracy of code is not uniform. >Degeneracy results because there are more codons to encode 20 amino acids.

14. >For example, UGA can be code for Selenocysteine (now viewed as 21 amino acid) and UAG can code for Pyrrolysine (viewed as 22nd amino acid). >Genetic code is Universal except few mitochondrial codes and, small variants such as translation of the codon UGA as Tryptophan in the species Mycoplasma and translation of CUG as Serine rather than Leucine in the genus Candida.

15. >In Bacteria and Archaea, GUG and UUG are common start codons but in rare cases certain proteins may use alternative start codons not normally used by that species. Conclusion >Despite these differences, all known species codes are very similar to each other and the coding mechanism is the same for all organisms: three base codons, tRNA, ribosomes, reading the code in the same direction and translating the code 3 letters at a time into sequence of amino acids.

16. Thank you