On May 27, 1961, Heinrich Matthaei, a postdoc working with NIH scientist Marshal Nirenberg, placed synthetic polyuracil RNA into 20 test tubes to see what it would produce. Each tube contained ...

While most of us tend to carry the same general set of genes, within the billions of bases that make up the human genome, there is variation in the sequence from one person to another. Small ...

DNA consists of a code language comprising four letters which make up what are known as codons, or words, each three letters long. Interpreting the language of the genetic code was the work of ...

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 ...

The genetics of a marine protozoan may overturn one of the long-held tenets of protein synthesis. According to conventional wisdom, the genetic code is unambiguous: each DNA triplet, or codon, ...

Most people do not yet understand the potential impact of our newfound ability to edit and eventually rewrite genetic code, the blueprint for life itself. At least, so say a number a number of experts ...