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 ...

In recent years, messenger RNA, DNA’s close cousin in life’s complex process of going from a string of genetic blueprints to fully functioning organism, has received intense scrutiny in the scientific ...

Accidental discoveries have led to numerous breakthroughs and innovations throughout history; the antibiotic penicillin, the microwave and even the drug Viagra are all products of chance discoveries.

A form of life that uses a fresh genetic “language” could be just a few years away. This comes after geneticists used a new technique to recode 5 per cent of the Salmonella bacterium’s genome, ...

The beauty of the DNA code is that organisms interpret it unambiguously. Each three-letter nucleotide sequence, or codon, in a gene codes for a unique amino acid that's added to a chain of amino acids ...