For a long time, plant lectin research concentrated on (i) the isolation and characterization of new carbohydrate binding proteins with interesting sugar binding and biological activities and (ii) the elucidation of the physiological role of different types of lectins from different species/taxa.
genetic code, the information carried by DNA that determines the specific amino acids and their sequence in each protein synthesized by an organism. The code consists of the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA molecule of each chromosome in the nucleus of every cell.
DNA and RNA are both capable of encoding genetic information, because there are biochemical mechanisms which read the information coded within a DNA or RNA sequence and use it to generate a specified protein. On the other hand, the sequence information of a protein molecule is not used by cells to functionally encode genetic information.: 5