While codons (combinations of three nucleotides) may vary in which do what functions, a long-standing rule was that each codon serves one specific purpose. New evidence, however suggests that ...

Inflammation has two faces. It can be short-lived like the swelling after a twisted ankle or a two-day fever when you get a mild flu, both part of the healing process. Or it can be a longer-lasting ...

Most organisms on Earth have the same basic genetic code, but it comes with some flaws. Scientists sought to work out those errors by creating their own artificial genome, which replaced E. coli’s ...

The code of life is simple. Four genetic letters arranged in triplets—called codons—encode amino acids. These are the building blocks of proteins, the machinery that powers life. But the genetic code ...

We’ve heard of GMOs, but this is ridiculous. Scientists at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology say they’ve engineered a bacteria whose genetic code is more efficient than ...

Scientists have created a bacteria with a genetic code more streamlined – and more meddled with – than any other life on Earth. This bacteria, a synthetic Escherichia coli called Syn57, has been ...

An illustration of E. coli. Scientists have been racing to shrink the genetic code of this bacterium. Kateryna Kon / Science Photo Library via Getty Images The DNA of nearly all life on Earth is made ...

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 ...

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.

We may have discovered a fundamental cause of cellular ageing that underlies many other ageing processes in cells. A study of the brains of freshwater fish called killifish has shown that, as they age ...