Question

Who suggested the clover leaf model of the tRNA?
A) Went
B) Flemming
C) Holley
D) Messelson

Answer 1

Hint: American biochemist, assumes the clover leaf like structure of tRNA in 1965 due to the concept of folding of the single stranded tRNA. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Marshall Warren Nirenberg and Har Gobind Khorana.

Complete Answer:
- Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968.
- He described the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis. Their research helped to explain the role of genetic code in controlling the synthesis of proteins. They demonstrated the role of tRNAs (a specific type of ribonucleic acids) in the assembly of amino acids into proteins.
- Holley along with his collaborators worked to develop separation techniques which isolate the different transfer RNAs.

Additional Information:
- Due to the distinctive folded structure with three hairpin loops the tRNA molecule has a shape of a three-leafed clover form.
- Anticodon sequences are present in one these hairpin loops which can recognize and decode an mRNA codon.
- Each tRNA has specific anticodons present on the Anticodon loop and thus have specific corresponding amino acids, and that’s how specific tRNA searches its corresponding Amino acid and gets attached to its end.

Note: The American biologist Paul C. Zamecnik and Mahlon Hoagland discovered tRNA in 1956. The Dutch biologist Frits Warmolt Went demonstrated the existence of auxin in plants in an experiment in 1928. Alexander Fleming was a Scottish physician-scientist who discovered penicillin. Matthew Stanley Meselson is a geneticist and molecular biologist currently at Harvard University, known for his demonstration, with Franklin Stahl, of semi-conservative DNA replication.