Fred Sanger

CGCATTCCG TTTCGCGAAGAT AGCGCGAACGGCGAACGC

ByEd Yong
November 20, 2013

A brief tribute to a great and influential scientist. I’ll explain later.

[Update: Okay, let me explain. That is a DNA sequence. Every set of three letters codes for an amino acid, and each amino acid is denoted by a letter. So CGC encodes arginine, which is denoted by an R. If you read along the sequence and translate it in this way, it spells out “RIP FRED SANGER”. Fred Sanger was an incredible scientist who developed ways of sequencing DNA and proteins (which are strings of amino acids). He revolutionised biology and medicine, won two Nobel prizes, and died earlier this week. This was the most fitting tribute I could think of.]

LIMITED TIME OFFER

Get a FREE tote featuring 1 of 7 ICONIC PLACES OF THE WORLD

Related Topics

Go Further