Beautiful

Some people who know me know that I’m working in the field of translation, meaning translation of genetic code into a sequence of amino acids forming a protein, or protein biosynthesis. So much so good. Or rather, I’m sure I lost 90% of the audience already.

Now the remaining ones please bear with me. In writing a review article I had to look up LepA on the internet since I had forgotten its synonym, EF4. LepA/EF4 is a factor that causes the ribosome to run backwards for a while. (I’m including an image of the structure, to be perfectly clear.)

The word LepA is of course recognized by Google as some or other company product, so I had to be more specific in the search. I thought a lookup of “LepA translation” would do it.

Back came the surprise. Google understood its task as having to look for a translation of LepA, and recognized Lepa as the Slovenian word for “beautiful.”

Now in this crazy world of memes and double meanings, could we say that beautiful is “in some sense” backwards?

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