  This article introduces a novel binary representation of the canonical
genetic code based on both the structural similarities of the nucleotides, as
well as the physicochemical properties of the encoded amino acids. Each of the
four mRNA bases is assigned a unique 2-bit identifier, so that the 64 triplet
codons are each indexed by a 6-bit label. The ordering of the bits reflects the
hierarchical organization manifested by the DNA replication/repair and tRNA
translation systems. In this system, transition and transversion mutations are
naturally expressed as binary operations, and the severities of the different
point mutations can be analyzed. Using a principal component analysis, it is
shown that the physicochemical properties of amino acids related to protein
folding also correlate with certain bit positions of their respective labels.
Thus, the likelihood for a point mutation to be conservative, and less likely
to cause a change in protein functionality, can be estimated.
