Bioinformatics Institute scientists probe absence of select DNA components

Abstract

Scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech report in the Journal of Bacteriology that two alphaproteobacteria lack the universal extra guanylate nucleotide typically found in the transfer RNA molecule tRNA. tRNAs are the molecules responsible for decoding sequence information specified by messenger RNA molecules, information which is ultimately encoded by the DNA template.