The 64 codons of the genetic code determine which amino acids are linked into a sequence to produce protein synthesis. Some of the codons specify the same amino acid by using only the first two letters of their codon triplet to do so, thus rendering their 3rd base irrelevant. Crick called this the wobble hypothesis, and a more complete understanding of the reading process could someday lead to a drug that can repair a misreading or to the creation of synthetic ribosomes capable of healthy protein synthesis. A step towards this goal is to apply mathematical logic to the 64 codons so that experimental results can be reproduced and to answer the specific question, how can the nucleotides in the three base positions be interpreted using mathematical code? Here it is shown that a mathematical formula derived from fluid mechanics predicts which codons in the dictionary will encode using their 3rd bases and which ones will not.
Transfer RNA in Decoding and the Wobble Hypothesis
