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 ...

The findings, which detail how amino acids shaped the genetic code of ancient microorganisms, shed light on the mystery of how life began on Earth. "You see the same amino acids in every organism, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Using quantum chemical methods, a team of researchers led by Dr. Matthias Granold and Professor Bernd Moosmann of the Institute of Pathobiochemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz solved one ...

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 ...

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 ...

Membrane proteins play important roles in health and disease, but they are so hydrophobic that they require detergents to maintain their shape outside membranes. That makes them difficult to study.

To ensure that protein production in our cells runs smoothly, the protein complex NAC slows down the rate of protein ...

All life on Earth relies on a standard set of 20 molecules called amino acids to build the proteins that carry out life's essential actions. But did it have to be this way? All living creatures on ...

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