This award supports graduate students and other junior members of the research group of Professor Paul Schimmel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to collaborate in biochemical genetics research with Professor Volker Erdmann and members of his research group at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Free University of Berlin, Germany. They are investigating the early development of the genetic code, by studying the chemical groups which are functional determinants of the operational RNA code for the amino acid alanine. Their joint effort on the alanine system benefits from the complementary expertise of the German group in chemical synthesis and characterization of novel RNA molecules combined with the expertise of the U.S. group in functional analysis of aminoacyl transfer RNA synthetases. The genetic code is an algorithm which specifies a relationship between trinucleotides and amino acids. This universal code is established by a process that attaches a specific transfer RNA (tRNA) to a given amino acid, and the process in turn is catalyzed by a group of twenty enzymes known as aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. These enzymes are believed to be among the earliest proteins to emerge from an RNA world to establish the genetic code. This collaborative work will improve understanding of these very fundamental steps that led to the assembly of the genetic code.