Is The Nucleic Acid Message in a Two-Symbol Code?

Abstract

In order to account for the diversity of adenine : guanine ratios in the deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) of various microorganisms, it is proposed that the code in DNA is a two-symbol code. Specifically, it is proposed that the code is a sequence of 6-amino or 6-keto groups and thus adenine is equivalent to cytosine and guanine to thymine (or, in RNA, to uracil). This hypothesis also provides a convenient explanation of the near-equivalence of 6-amino and 6-keto nucleotides in the total RNA of various organisms.

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