“Get me a rewrite,” reporters used to shout into a telephone when they called into a newsroom with changing information. Scientists may now want to yell the same thing — but about how our existing genetic code came to be, according to a study in PNAS.
That rewrite could shift our understanding of how life evolved on Earth from its simplest forms, and what it could look like on other planets.
How the Genetic Code Works
That code is both deceptively simple in appearance, but amazingly complicated in function. Its basis is four molecular letters that always pair in particular ways (“code” is different than “sequence,” which is the order all those letters are arranged). Next, three sets of those letters (called codons) work together to form one of 20 amino acids. Those, in turn, create proteins, which are essential building blocks of life.
