Protein Translation

Protein Translation

Translate RNA sequences into proteins.
Deep Dive into Protein Translation!

Explore 11 different ways to solve this exercise, including imperative approaches, functional ideas like pattern matching, recursion, and higher order functions, and some low-level coding in C++ and Assembly.

Instructions

Translate RNA sequences into proteins.

RNA can be broken into three-nucleotide sequences called codons, and then translated to a protein like so:

RNA: "AUGUUUUCU" => translates to

Codons: "AUG", "UUU", "UCU" => which become a protein with the following sequence =>

Protein: "Methionine", "Phenylalanine", "Serine"

There are 64 codons which in turn correspond to 20 amino acids; however, all of the codon sequences and resulting amino acids are not important in this exercise. If it works for one codon, the program should work for all of them. However, feel free to expand the list in the test suite to include them all.

There are also three terminating codons (also known as 'STOP' codons); if any of these codons are encountered (by the ribosome), all translation ends and the protein is terminated.

All subsequent codons after are ignored, like this:

RNA: "AUGUUUUCUUAAAUG" =>

Codons: "AUG", "UUU", "UCU", "UAA", "AUG" =>

Protein: "Methionine", "Phenylalanine", "Serine"

Note the stop codon "UAA" terminates the translation and the final methionine is not translated into the protein sequence.

Below are the codons and resulting amino acids needed for the exercise.

Codon Amino Acid
AUG Methionine
UUU, UUC Phenylalanine
UUA, UUG Leucine
UCU, UCC, UCA, UCG Serine
UAU, UAC Tyrosine
UGU, UGC Cysteine
UGG Tryptophan
UAA, UAG, UGA STOP

Learn more about protein translation on Wikipedia.


Source

Tyler Long