The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 amino acids. But certain groups of microbes have an expanded genetic code, in ...

The same amino acid can be encoded by anywhere from one to six different strings of letters in the genetic code. Andrzej Wojcicki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images Nearly all life, from bacteria ...

This circular diagram represents the genetic code, showing how the four nucleotide bases of RNA (adenine [A], cytosine [C], guanine [G], and uracil [U]) form codons that specify amino acids. Each ...

Despite awe-inspiring diversity, nearly every lifeform – from bacteria to blue whales – shares the same genetic code. How and when this code came about has been the subject of much scientific ...

There are many possible three-letter genetic codes that could adequately encode protein sequences, but what about the need to encode higher-order information on binding and splicing sites? New ...

Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way it is? A recent ...

As wildly diverse as life on Earth is—whether it’s a jaguar hunting down a deer in the Amazon, an orchid vine spiraling around a tree in the Congo, primitive cells growing in boiling hot springs in ...

Getting a full readout of your entire genetic sequence promises to radically alter how we monitor our health, providing advanced warning of cancer and other diseases we may suffer and our chances of ...

We know about DNA on Earth. What would carry the genetic code elsewhere? In a recent paper published in the journal Astrobiology, Steven Benner from the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in ...