The idea of American biologist James D. Watson

James D. Watson

James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick...

 and Russian-American physicist George Gamow

George Gamow

George Gamow , born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov , was a Russian-born theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He discovered alpha decay via quantum tunneling and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave...

, the RNA Tie Club was a scientific gentleman's club of select members who shared their ideas on how to 'read' the message inside DNA and understand how it relates to proteins. The club was started in 1954 with an aim to "solve the riddle of the RNA structure and to understand how it built proteins." The club consisted of 20 members representing each amino acid, with an additional four honorary members representing each nucleotide. All members received woolen neckties with an embroidered helix on them, hence the name 'RNA Tie Club'

Members of the RNA Tie Club

member	|RNA Tie Club Designation	George Gamow George Gamow George Gamow , born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov , was a Russian-born theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He discovered alpha decay via quantum tunneling and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave...	Physicist	ALA	Synthesizer
Alexander Rich Alexander Rich Alexander Rich, MD is a biologist and biophysicist. He is the William Thompson Sedgwick Professor of Biophysics at MIT and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rich earned both an A.B. and an M.D. from Harvard University. He was a post-doc of Linus Pauling along with James Watson...	Biochemist	ARG	Lord Privy Seal of the British Cabinet
Paul Doty	Physical Chemist	ASP
Robert Ledley	Mathematical Biophysicist	ASN
Martynas Ycas	Biochemist	CYS	Archivist
Robley Williams	Electron Microscopist	GLU
Alexander Dounce	Biochemist	GLN
Richard Feynman Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...	Theoretical Physicist	GLY
Melvin Calvin Melvin Calvin Melvin Ellis Calvin was an American chemist most famed for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent most of his five-decade career at the University of California, Berkeley.- Life :Calvin was born...	Chemist	HIS
Norman Simons	Biochemist	ISO
Edward Teller Edward Teller Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist, known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb," even though he did not care for the title. Teller made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy , and surface physics...	Physicist	LEU
Erwin Chargaff Erwin Chargaff Erwin Chargaff was an American biochemist who emigrated to the United States during the Nazi era. Through careful experimentation, Chargaff discovered two rules that helped lead to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA...	Biochemist	LYS
Nicholas Metropolis Nicholas Metropolis Nicholas Constantine Metropolis was a Greek American physicist.-Work:Metropolis received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics at the University of Chicago...	Physicist, Mathematician	MET
Gunther Stent Gunther Stent Gunther S. Stent was Graduate Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was born in Berlin as "Günter Siegmund Stensch"; the name was changed after the migration to the USA...	Physical Chemist	PHE
James Watson James D. Watson James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick...	Biologist	PRO	Optimist
Harold Gordon	Biologist	SER
Leslie Orgel Leslie Orgel Leslie Eleazer Orgel FRS was a British chemist.Born in London, England, Orgel received his B.A. in chemistry with first class honours from Oxford University in 1949...	Theoretical Chemist	THR
Max Delbrück Max Delbrück Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück was a German-American biophysicist and Nobel laureate.-Biography:Delbrück was born in Berlin, German Empire...	Theoretical Physicist	TRY
Francis Crick Francis Crick Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson...	Biologist	TYR	Pessimist
Sydney Brenner Sydney Brenner Sydney Brenner, CH FRS is a South African biologist and a 2002 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine laureate, shared with H...	Biologist	VAL

The Tie and Tiepin

Members of the RNA Tie Club were to receive a black wool-knit tie with a green and yellow RNA helix emblazoned on it. The original design of the tie came from Orgel, with the final pattern being a re-imagining by Gamow.Gamow's tie pattern was delivered to a Los Angeles haberdasher on Colorado Avenue by Watson, with the shop tailor promising to make the ties for $4 each.
Along with each tie, members of the club were to receive a golden tiepin with the three letter abbreviation of their club amino acid designation. Not all members may have received their pin. Gamow, however, wore his pin on several occasions, often causing some confusion and questioning of why he was wearing the "wrong initials".

Successes

Meetings of the RNA Tie Club were friendly, cordial affairs involving cigars and alcohol. This time allowed for bonding and close friendships among this scientific elite, and it turned out to be a breeding ground for creative ideas. While meetings were held twice a year, between meetings the members mailed letters and preprints of articles suggesting new concepts and ideas.

Number of nucleotides in a codon

Using mathematics, Gamow postulated that a nucleotide code consisting of three letters would be enough to define all 20 amino acids. This concept is the basis of "codons", and set an upper and lower limit on the size of a codon.

Codons

Sydney Brenner proposed the concept of a codon, the idea that three nucleotides could code for one amino acid. His proof involved statistics and experimental evidence from amino acid protein sequences.

Adaptor Hypothesis

Francis Crick proposed the "Adaptor hypothesis

Adaptor hypothesis

The adaptor hypothesis is part of a scheme to explain how information encoded in DNA is used to specify the amino acid sequence of proteins. It was formulated by Francis Crick in the mid-1950s, together with the central dogma of molecular biology and the sequence hypothesis...

" suggesting that some molecule ferried the amino acids around, and put them in the correct order corresponding to the nucleic acid sequence. He also suggested that there were 20 separate adaptor molecules. This was later to be found true by Robert Holley

Robert W. Holley

Robert William Holley was an American biochemist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for describing the structure of alanine transfer RNA, linking DNA and protein synthesis.Holley was born in Urbana, Illinois, and graduated from Urbana High School in 1938...

 and the adaptor molecules were named transfer RNA

Transfer RNA

Transfer RNA is an adaptor molecule composed of RNA, typically 73 to 93 nucleotides in length, that is used in biology to bridge the three-letter genetic code in messenger RNA with the twenty-letter code of amino acids in proteins. The role of tRNA as an adaptor is best understood by...

s.

Personal successes

Many members of the RNA Tie Club achieved professional success, with several of them becoming Nobel Laureates. However, the ultimate goal of understanding and deciphering the code link between nucleic acids and amino acids was achieved by Marshall Nirenberg, who was not a member of the RNA Tie Club..