The Futile Cycle

I was rereading a classic paper by Francis Crick, the one in which he describes how they discovered the triplet nature of the genetic code. [Crick et al. (1961) Nature 192, 1227-1232.] It’s an absolutely fantastic paper – extraordinarily well written, clear in logic, and with no lack of charm – but this time through, something else caught my eye (emphasis added):

¹¹Feynman, R. P.; Benzer, S.; Freese, E. (all personal communications).

This, of course, refers to the rather famous Richard P. Feynman, the bongo-playing, womanizing theoretical physicist of quantum electrodynamics fame.

Apparently, Feynman took a summer off and did work on phage T4 genetics, specifically on the rII region. During his work, he figured that he was isolating multiple mutations in the same gene - a mutation and its suppressor. It’s neat that he was so close to getting to the fundamental nature of frameshift mutations, but alas, he returned to theoretical physics soon afterwards. Thus, it was up to another physicist-turned-biologist (Francis Crick) to discover the real nature of reading frames and the triplet code.

But in any case, a really neat historical crossover between fields.

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