Abstract—This study reports novel discoveries as (i) poly-U described by Matthaei and Nirenberg in 1961 could never satisfy the versatility requirements of mRNA, (ii) the 5' to 3' reading direction of poly-U does not comply to mRNA’s unidirectional reading direction of 5' to 3', (iii) Matthaei and Nirenberg did not and could not experimentally distinguish “messenger poly-U” from “non-messenger poly-U”, (iv) Matthaei-Nirenberg’s poly-U was not a discovery of natural nucleic acid molecule, (v) poly-U is a “one-letter language” instead of “four-letter language” stated in Crick’s “coding problem”, i.e., each triplet segment in poly-U has a math model of “1 × 1 × 1 = 1”, yet that of mRNA is “4 × 4 ×4 = 64”.  
 

Keywords—Matthaei and Nirenberg, poly-U, messenger RNA 

Cite: Xingyang Yang, "A Novel Discovery: Poly-U in 1961 Matthaei-Nirenberg Experiment Cannot Act as mRNA," International Journal of Pharma Medicine and Biological Sciences, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 48-55, 2024.

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