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The Genome As Word Puzzle: Who’s Ready to Play?
I’m always learning something from the readers of the Loom. Yesterday, I wrote about how scientists had inserted their names into a synthetic genome, and how such signatures would erode away like graffiti inside real organisms. But how about the opposite case–what if evolution has produced sequences of DNA that happen to form words?
In the comment thread, Peter Ellis asked,
Bear in mind the rules of this game…the letters are the amino acids specified by codons (three bases of DNA). There are 20 amino acids in most living things, so you can’t spell every word–or you can use alternatives, like using V for U. (Here’s a table.)
Ron then replied:
Just wander over to NCBI and blast to your