Scientists have long believed that a universal genetic code serves as a blueprint for all life on Earth, dictating the structure and function of organisms from the simplest bacteria to complex humans.

"The genetic code is this amazing thing in which a string of DNA or RNA containing sequences of four nucleotides is translated into protein sequences using 20 different amino acids," said Joanna Masel ...

Scientists in the UK have rewritten one of life’s oldest operating systems. They have built a bacterium that functions with a stripped-down genetic code, eliminating seven of the 64 instructions used ...

There are few hard and fast rules in the study of life, but perhaps the closest we get is the central dogma of molecular biology: DNA is transcribed to RNA, which gets translated into proteins. The ...

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 ...

A team from the University of Illinois has uncovered surprising evolutionary links between the genetic code and tiny protein fragments called dipeptides. By analyzing billions of dipeptide sequences ...

In a giant feat of genetic engineering, scientists have created bacteria that make proteins in a radically different way than all natural species do. By Carl Zimmer At the heart of all life is a code.

URBANA, Ill. – 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 ...