Scientists have long believed that a universal genetic code serves as a blueprint for all life on Earth, dictating the structure and function of organisms from the simplest bacteria to complex humans.

Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way it is? Subscribe ...

In the largest screen to date for alternative genetic codes, a computer program named Codetta scanned more than 250,000 genome sequences from bacteria and archaea to identify five never-before-seen ...

The same amino acid can be encoded by anywhere from one to six different strings of letters in the genetic code. Andrzej Wojcicki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images Nearly all life, from bacteria ...

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have confirmed that bacteria-killing viruses called bacteriophages deploy a sneaky tactic when targeting their hosts: They use a ...

The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 amino acids. But certain groups of microbes have an expanded genetic code, in ...

A team from the University of Illinois has uncovered surprising evolutionary links between the genetic code and tiny protein fragments called dipeptides. By analyzing billions of dipeptide sequences ...

New technology has a history of overwhelming existing systems that try to manage it, and that’s proving to be the case with genetic testing and health care. It’s been only 20 years since the ...

URBANA, Ill. – Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make organisms function. But how and why did it come to be the way ...