Re: Translation inefficiency queston

On 23 Jun 2006 09:13:00 -0700, HWayne@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

When mRNA is translated into proteins, anticodons have to attach to the
codons, which then connect amino acids to the mRNA. This seems
incredibly inefficient to me. Resources and energy could be saved if
the amino acids could directly attach to the codons (and not use
anticodons), or even attach to the DNA itself and then separate once
the chain is formed.

Is/was there an advantage to the method, or is the complexity just a
"blunder" of evolution?

Please excuse me if I've gotten the process wrong, or if I'm asking an
easily solvable question. I'm only a high school student, and the
resources I have do not answer the question.


There are many factors involved in your question including basic
chemistry. Amino acids do not bind to just anything. The codon
triplet is not a suitable binding site. So evolution had to use
tricks to find a way to make a hunk of tRNA bind to a specific amino
acid. And then it uses the anti-codon trick to bind to the codon to
make the proper match.

Second, there is not necessary a particular advantage or optimization
to many things that exist as a result of evolution. The evolutionary
process doesn't think out a system from the start and consider the
"best" way of doing things. It just cobbles together something out of
what already exists and then, if that works, makes finer and finer
"touch-ups" until no further advantages are gained using that basic
framework. There are innumerable examples of what is often called
"bad design" in biology and even more of might be called "what in the
world were they thinking of".

So the most important point is, third, it does not make sense to ask
"why didn't evolution do it this other way?" or "wouldn't it be better
to ...?"

So, in this case, it is not a "blunder" of evolution but in fact a
clever way of handling a complex problem. But there do seem to be
strange paths that evolution follows. Whether they are "blunders" is
another story. If you personally happen to be the result, it is hard
to think of it as blundering.





.

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