Living things, from bacteria to humans, depend on a workforce of proteins to carry out essential tasks within their cells. Proteins are chains of amino acids that are strung together according to ...

Hidden within the genetic code lies the "triplet code," a series of three nucleotides that determine a single amino acid. How did scientists discover and unlock this amino acid code? Once the budding ...

A team of investigators at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and its Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology in La Jolla, California is introducing revolutionary changes into the genetic code of ...

Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make ...

With only rare exceptions, every organism constructs proteins from just 20 building blocks called amino acids. Recently, however, researchers modified Escherichia coli bacteria so that the ...

Evolution settled on a genetic code that uses four letters to name 20 amino acids. Synthetic biologists adding new bases to DNA will be free to improve on nature — if they can. With recent innovations ...

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) report in an upcoming article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society their synthesis of a form of the bacterium Escherichia coli with a ...

Scientists analyze 4.3 billion dipeptides across species to trace genetic code evolution and early protein development.

Humans possess six forms of the protein actin, which perform essential functions in the body. Two in particular, β-actin and γ-actin, are nearly identical, only differing by four amino acids. Yet ...