Every one of the ~19,700+ life forms this catalogue models shares the same dictionary: a 64-entry table mapping each 3-base mRNA codon to one of 20 amino acids (or a stop signal). This is the "universal genetic code" — nearly identical from bacteria to humans, strong evidence the whole tree of life descends from one common ancestor (LUCA).
64 codons (4³) → 20 amino acids + 3 stop codons
Reading frame: mRNA is read 5'→3' in non-overlapping triplets
Redundancy: most amino acids have 2-6 synonymous codons
The code is degenerate but not ambiguous: a codon always specifies exactly one amino acid, but most amino acids are specified by several codons that usually differ only at the 3rd ("wobble") position — Leucine, Serine and Arginine each have 6.
The wobble hypothesis (Crick, 1966) explains why: the tRNA anticodon's first base (position 34, pairing with the codon's 3rd base) tolerates non-Watson-Crick pairing, so one tRNA can decode several synonymous codons:
Anticodon wobble base → codon 3rd base it can read
G → C or U
U → A or G
I (inosine) → U, C, or A
C → G only
A → U only
- Codon table mode — set the 1st, 2nd and 3rd base of the mRNA codon; the matching cell lights up on the 8×8 codon grid.
- Highlight synonymous codons — outlines every cell in the grid that encodes the same amino acid as the current selection, showing the redundancy at a glance.
- Wobble decoder mode — pick a tRNA anticodon (wobble base + bases 2 & 3); every codon it can actually decode lights up on the grid, computed live from the real wobble-pairing rules and cross-checked against the codon table so the result is genuinely correct.
Real-world relevance: this exact table is what a ribosome reads during translation, what mitochondrial DNA sequencing pipelines decode, and what codon-optimization tools rebalance when engineering a gene for expression in a different organism.