Nirenberg's Genetic Code Chart, 1961-66 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 ...

Two-faced codon rewrites genetics? 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: ...

DNA contains foundational information needed to sustain life. Understanding how this information is stored and organized has been one of the greatest scientific challenges of the last century.

A new technique which colour codes DNA for laser sequencing may offer a faster and cheaper way of sequencing genomes compared with conventional methods. By dyeing each of DNA's four building ...

Now, another group of scientists, some of whom worked on Syn61, have managed to further reduce the genetic code of E. coli down to 57 codons, making Syn57. They recently published their work in ...

A Swedish-Finnish study shows that a fifth “letter” in the DNA of human cells changes the way their genetic code is read. Published in Science, the results help understand the ways DNA directs gene ...

In a giant feat of genetic engineering, scientists have created bacteria that make proteins in a radically different way than all natural species do.