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This is special puzzle, with no story. It should be very easy for people who know what is this:

GgcuuUcaGuUgUauAuuUguUaa

The target is to find the word from that string.

Formatted: Ggc uuU caG uUg Uau Auu Ugu Uaa

And, if you really want to crack this:

Genetics...

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    $\begingroup$ A bit of feedback: I think the puzzle would have been a bit better without either of the hints. $\endgroup$
    – Gareth McCaughan ♦
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 13:02
  • $\begingroup$ @GarethMcCaughan Thank you! $\endgroup$
    – Jenia
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 13:29

1 Answer 1

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The answer is in fact

literally GENETICS, or possibly (see below) merely GENETIC.

To get it

interpret triples of letters as codons in the RNA genetic code (it has to be RNA rather than DNA because it uses U rather than T). This gives a sequence of amino acids, which have both 3-letter and 1-letter abbreviations. Use the 3-letter ones, and use the capital letters in the base-string to indicate which letter to take from each. Thus:
Ggc -> Gly -> G
uuU -> phE -> E
caG -> glN -> N
uUg -> lEu -> E
Uau -> Tyr -> T
Auu -> Ile -> I
Ugu -> Cys -> C
Uaa -> Stop -> S

There's a bit of ambiguity here because

we could take the final stop codon as (1) meaning to stop there (so we get GENETIC) or (2) to take the first letter of "STOP" (so we get GENETICS).

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