For decades, scientists working with genetic material have labored with a few basic rules in mind. To start, DNA is transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA), and mRNA is translated into proteins, which ...

Proteins that were present during the origin of life may have consisted of only seven primordial amino acids, a study suggests. The 20 amino acids commonly found in proteins are encoded by a total of ...

61 codons specify one of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins 3 codons are stop codons, which signal the termination of protein synthesis Importantly, the genetic code is nearly universal, shared ...

In two parallel projects, researchers have rewritten the genetic code of the bacterium E. coli. In the first study they created a genetically and biochemically novel organism by erasing every example ...

Using directed evolution, chemists have created a novel ribosome that can insert multiple unnatural amino acids into a single protein in cells. Until now, the lack of available codons—he ...

Superimposed on the genetic sequences coding for amino acids is a second genetic code. This second genetic code, which makes use of dual-use codons, or duons, specifies how genes are controlled. The ...

A central tenet of biology may need updating given new measurements of start codons. For decades, scientists working with genetic material have labored with a few basic rules in mind. To start, DNA is ...