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Is a Bigger Genetic Code Better? Get Ready to Find Out
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 —...
A Mathematician Who Decodes the Patterns Stamped Out by Life
...Other collective organisms such as slime molds must contend with evolutionary pressures both on the whole and on individuals. And in still larger systems like the African savanna, evolution shapes...
The End of the RNA World Is Near, Biochemists Argue
...and Evolution delineated why the RNA world hypothesis does not provide a sufficient foundation for the evolutionary events that followed. Instead, said Charles Carter, a structural biologist at the University...
New Bird Species Arises From Hybrids, as Scientists Watch
...organisms’ evolutionary histories. Some of those clues suggest that interbreeding plays a larger role in the formation of new species than previously thought. But the issue remains contentious: Hybridization has...
Solution: ‘Triumph or Cooperation in Game Theory and Evolution’
...using CRISPR to “cheat” in editing animal genomes could overpower evolution; and “Choosy Eggs May Pick Sperm for Their Genes, Defying Mendel’s Law,” by Carrie Arnold, which describes similar cheating...
What Bacteria Can Tell Us About Human Evolution
To discover our species’ deep history and to shape its future health, we should learn from the microbes that accompanied us on our evolutionary journey. It is human nature to...
How Bacteria Help Regulate Blood Pressure
...of the body. If in the course of evolution these chemical sensors hooked up to the machinery for manufacturing a hormone rather than to a smell neuron, and if that...
Bacteria Sacrifice DNA Repair for Better RNA
Preserving its DNA ought to be a cell’s top priority. But bacteria slow their DNA repair to a crawl in favor of proofreading gene transcripts. Evolution is a game of...
Seeing the Beautiful Intelligence of Microbes
...may be genetically encoded into these cells by billions of years of evolution, but in that sense the cells are not so different from robots programmed to respond in sophisticated...