IT IS one of the fundamental principles of life. DNA makes RNA, and each three-letter “codon” of RNA is an instruction to include one of 20 different amino acids in a protein chain.
Not for much longer. Last week, Farren Isaacs from Harvard University announced that he was close to “recoding” the genome of Escherichia coli so that a DNA codon that usually signals the end of a protein chain now sits unused and waiting to be reassigned to a different amino acid – perhaps one that doesn’t even exist yet.
Meanwhile, Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge has modified…
