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 ...

UC Berkeley scientists discovered that a microbe can interpret the UAG stop codon in two ways, producing different proteins ...

Pyrrolysine is an important component of methyltransferase enzymes, which the archaea use to metabolize methylamine in the environment. “The need for that metabolism and availability of the machinery ...

From time immemorial, every living thing has shared the same basic set of building blocks — 20 amino acids from which all proteins are made. That is, until now: A group of scientists say they have, ...

The DNA inside of living organisms is packed with information, so much so that it's hard to search genetic databases, but ...

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 ...

Call it a mystery with a stubby tail: an odd-looking mouse discovered through a U.S. government breeding program in the 1940s that had a short, kinky tail and an extra set of ribs in its neck – and ...

The DNA of nearly all life on Earth contains many redundancies, and scientists have long wondered whether these redundancies served a purpose or if they were just leftovers from evolutionary processes ...