“It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry—which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books—that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's.” ScienceNatureWatsonBiochemistryNobel LaureateGeneralizationsStrikingJames WatsonJames D WatsonGamowGeorge Gamow Author:Francis Crick