Rook's tour representation of the genetic code.

Disconnected recurrences of the stop signal, serine and arginine appear in the original representation of the genetic code, and of the stop signal, arginine, serine and leucine in the codon ring representation. To achieve connectedness along with structural continuity, a rook's tour representation is presented here. On the basis of structural similarities and disparities in their side groups, each of the 20 amino acids is associated with a domain comprised of from one to six contiguous squares on the chess board. As the rook moves on the chess board, it reaches all 64 squares in the ordering of the codon numbers, which prescribe the codons by a simple formula based on the position and size of the nucleotides in a triplet. Recurrences of the stop signal, arginine and serine occur naturally on the tour as the rook enters each of the latter domains for the second time. A mathematical equivalent of the rook's tour may enter as a programming device in the implementation of the code by the RNAs.