Codon

Translation is the name of the process of decoding protein sequence from mRNA, the polypeptide amino acid sequence being determined by the base sequence of its mRNA. The RNA bases are ‘read' in a 3-bp or triplet code, each 3-bp unit being referred to as a codon. The ‘decoding' is performed by tRNA, which recognises each codon by virtue of a complementary RNA sequence (the anticodon), which forms a unique part of each tRNA molecule.