Historical review: Deciphering the genetic code – a personal account

This is an autobiographical description of the events that led to the breaking of the genetic code and the subsequent race to decipher the code. The code was deciphered in two stages over a five-year period between 1961 and 1966. During the first stage, the base compositions of codons were deciphered by the directing cell-free protein synthesis with randomly ordered RNA preparations. During the second phase, the nucleotide sequences of RNA codons were deciphered by determining the species of aminoacyl-tRNA that bound to ribosomes in response to trinucleotides of known sequence. Views on general topics such as how to pick a research problem and competition versus collaboration also are discussed.