ANATOMICAL MNEMONICS OF THE GENETIC CODE: A FUNCTIONAL ICOSAHEDRON AND THE VIGESIMAL SYSTEM OF THE MAYA TO REPRESENT THE TWENTY PROTEINOGENIC AMINO ACIDS

摘要

In programming and bioinformatics, the graphical interface is vital to describe and to abbreviate aspects and concepts of the physical world. The Mayan Culture developed the vigesimal system, a numerical system based on their count of fingers and toes. My objective is to equate the Mayan system and their numerical representation to the twenty amino acids according to size, except for the number one, represented by a dot, that here is given to cysteine, which acts as glue among peptides as one of its properties; in such a way, two vertical dots will be easily used to represent its related selenocysteine. The Mayan numerical system included the zero, represented by the Maya with an empty shell that here is used to represent the stop codons. On the other hand, the Chinese had a binary numerical system, similar to the binary comparisons of the three properties of Nucleotides within the double helix: H-Bonds, C-Rings and Tautomerism, called the I Ching which here is applied to the natural groups of amino acids that result of the 64-codons compared in binary in their H-Bonds versus their C-Rings, used here to successfully represent the mature sequence of the glucagon amino acids. Additional anatomical tools for the mnemonics of the genetic code and of its amino acid groups are also presented, as well as a functional icosahedron to represent them. Concluding, tools are presented for the visual analysis of proteins and peptide sequencing in bioinformatics and education to teach the genetic code and its resulting amino acids, plus their numerical systems.