How does DNA determine an organism’s characteristics? A process called translation decodes RNA created during transcription, and uses it to create proteins that perform specific cellular functions.

For decades, biology students have learned one rule about the genetic code that supposedly has no exceptions: three specific DNA sequences act as stop signs, telling the cell’s protein-building ...

The genomes of species from bacteria to Drosophila show unique biases for particular synonymous codons—varying triplet base pairs that code for the same amino acids—but it has been unclear if such ...

A microscopic organism from a freshwater pond is playing by a different set of genetic rules. The newly identified protist, Oligohymenophorea sp. PL0344, which scientists stumbled across while ...

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 ...

Living organisms synthesize a staggering variety of proteins by combining 20 amino acids into chains of any length and order. In the past, to expand protein diversity beyond the scope of these 20 ...

Starting from the four innermost letters and working to the outermost ring, this table shows shows which three-letter base sequence or codon encodes which amino acid. In the journal Angewandte Chemie ...

One of modern biologists' most ambitious goals is to learn how to expand or otherwise modify the genetic code of life on Earth, in order to make new, artificial life forms. Part of the motivation for ...

DNA is admired for its perfection as a programmable information molecule: it uses repeating polymerization chemistry to link four nucleotide building blocks (adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine) ...