Relating a gene to a sequence of amino acids, Sydney Brenner

Interviewee: Sydney Brenner. Sydney Brenner talks about the gene, and Seymour Benzer's contributions in matching the gene to protein sequence. (DNAi Location: Code > Reading the code > Players > Sydney Brenner > Defining the gene)

I think if you'd been in science and you wondered how on earth, you know, are we ever going to get to the bottom of this, what is the guiding concept, I think the most important thing there was that immediately you could say, boy if we could find out how the sequence of bases corresponds to the sequence of amino acids, because now we could define the gene not just as a blob, not just as a bead on a string, but we could define the gene now as a length of DNA. And that's also very important to recognize what Seymour Benzer showed roughly at the same time, perhaps a year later, was that he changed the idea of mutation being just something, you know, that deformed the blob if we could say, into something that was a precise change at a certain position. In other words, he, if you like it, he was able to show that the scale over which mutation took place was at the molecular scale of the structure of the DNA.

seymour benzer,sydney brenner,sequence of amino acids,protein sequence,dnai,location code,interviewee,blob,mutation,dna,earth,science

Related Content

16491. Biography 21: Sydney Brenner (1927-2019)

Sydney Brenner showed that mRNA was the unstable intermediate that carried the message from DNA to the ribosomes.

  • ID: 16491
  • Source: DNALC.DNAFTB

15285. RNA transcription/translation, Sydney Brenner

In this first of a two-part clip, Sydney Brenner describes the information transfer problem from DNA to the protein-making machinery.

  • ID: 15285
  • Source: DNAi

15881. Defining the gene

Seymour Benzer was able to map mutations within one phage gene and correlate the mutations with protein changes. This showed that the DNA sequence of a gene was aligned with protein sequence.

  • ID: 15881
  • Source: DNAi

15280. After the discovery of the double helix structure, Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner talks about James Watson's work on RNA.

  • ID: 15280
  • Source: DNAi

15278. Encoding information, Sydney Brenner

Sydney Brenner talks about the idea of applying a code to DNA sequence.

  • ID: 15278
  • Source: DNAi

15160. Sequencing proteins and DNA, Frederick Sanger

Frederick Sanger talks about the differences between sequencing proteins and sequencing DNA.

  • ID: 15160
  • Source: DNAi

16483. Gallery 21: Seymour Benzer, Rita Levi Montalcini, Ed Lewis and Sydney Brenner, 1991

A 1991 Caltech function. (L-R) Seymour Benzer, Rita Levi Montalcini, Ed Lewis and Sydney Brenner.

  • ID: 16483
  • Source: DNAFTB

15353. Figuring out the other codons, Marshall Nirenberg

After decoding the "easy" codons, Marshall Nirenberg talks about his strategy for decoding the rest.

  • ID: 15353
  • Source: DNAi

15286. Viral RNA can reprogram the ribosomes, Sydney Brenner

In this second of a two-part clip, Sydney Brenner describes the experiment they did to prove the existence and function of RNA.

  • ID: 15286
  • Source: DNAi

16023. Seymour Benzer, 1954

Mutations are changes in genetic information.

  • ID: 16023
  • Source: DNAi