Studies on the Structure of Purified Alanine and Valine Transfer RNA from Yeast

To know the primary and secondary structure of transfer RNA (see review by Berg, 1961) would greatly increase our understanding of the mechanism of protein synthesis and of the translation process whereby the genetic message is formed into a protein. Highly purified transfer RNAs specific for certain amino acids are now available, thanks largely to Holley's pioneering work (Holley and Merrill, 1959; Apgar, et al., 1962). The present paper is a progress report concerning our efforts to elucidate the nucleotide sequences in alanine and valine specific yeast transfer RNA.