Cloverleaf model of tRNA
The cloverleaf model of tRNA is a model that depicts the molecular structure of tRNA. The model revealed that the chain of tRNA consists of two ends—sometimes called "business ends"—and three arms. Two of the arms have a loop, D-loop and Tψc-loop with a ribosome recognition site. The third arm known as "variable arm" has a stem with optional loop. One end of the chains, the amino acids acceptor stem, usually attaches to amino acids and such reactions are often catalyzed by a specific enzymes, aminoacyl tRNA synthetase. For example, if the amino acid that attach to the end is alanine, the reaction will be catalyzed by alanine-tRNA synthase to produce tRNAphe.
The other end—the bottom often called the "DNA arm"—consists of a three base sequence that pairs with a complementary base sequence in a mRNA.
