DNA is often referred to as the blueprint for life, however scientists have for the first time discovered a microbe that uses two different translations of the DNA code at random. This unexpected ...

Eukaryotic protein sequences often contain amino-acid homopolymers that consist of a single amino acid repeated from several to dozens of times. Some of these are functional but others may persist ...

The other known alternate sense codon use among yeast was first identified in Candida albicans two decades ago. This too involves a CUG codon, but results in serine in the translated protein. “For ...

In a similar way to the binary code of ones and zeroes that tell a computer program what to do, living cells follow instructions encoded in DNA to construct organisms. It's long been thought that any ...

(Nanowerk News) In a step forward for genetic engineering and synthetic biology, researchers have modified a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to be immune to natural viral infections while also ...

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 ...