Ice, quakes, and a wobble shake san francisco

The fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco last month was bumped to the Moscone Center while the Civic Auditorium, its venue in past years, was being reinforced against earthquakes. And that may have been fitting, given the meeting's focus on sudden events in Earth history: the first moments of fault rupture, repeated outbursts of icebergs during the last ice age, and a shift in the seasons in the middle of this century.     

Changing the identity of a tRNA by introducing a G-U wobble pair near the 3' acceptor end

Although the genetic code for protein was established in the 1960's, the basis for amino acid identity of transfer RNA (tRNA) has remained unknown. To investigate the identity of a tRNA, the nucleotides at three computer-identified positions in tRNAPhe (phenylalanine tRNA) were replaced with the corresponding nucleotides from tRNAAla (alanine tRNA). The identity of the resulting tRNA, when examined as an amber suppressor in Escherichia coli, was that of tRNAAla.