The Wobble Hypothesis

Wobble refers to the fact that non-Watson-Crick base complementarity can occur in codon-anticodon interactions. The interactions that we observe are summarized in the Table below. The wobble that we observe involves the interaction between the third codon position of the mRNA and the first position of the anticodon in the tRNA.

The fact that "wobble" occurs allows for multiple codons to be recognized by a single tRNA. For example, since a G in the anticodon can interact with both U and C, the codons UUU and UUC can both be bound by a tRNA with the anticodon sequence 3'- AAG -5', where the bold G indicates the G that "wobbles".