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 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.

Decades of research has viewed DNA as a sequence-based instruction manual; yet every cell in the body shares the same genes – so where is the language that writes the memory of cell identities?

The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 ...

UC Berkeley scientists discovered that a microbe can interpret the UAG stop codon in two ways, producing different proteins ...