Although chemists can synthesize virtually any small organic molecule, our ability to rationally manipulate the structures of proteins is quite limited, despite their involvement in virtually every life process. For most proteins, modifications are largely restricted to substitutions among the common 20 amino acids. Herein we describe recent advances that make it possible to add new building bl...

When Maria Leptin called to say that I had been awarded the 2010 EMBO Gold Medal, I was delighted and surprised. The roll call of past winners is impressive, and I had been at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) when Jan Löwe had received the award in 2007 for his elegant work on the bacterial cytoskeleton (Michie and Löwe, 2006). I also knew that several other LMB scientists, including B...

Monomethylamine methyltransferase of the archaebacterium Methanosarcina barkeri contains a novel amino acid, pyrrolysine, encoded by the termination codon UAG. Initial studies suggest that pyrrolysine may be co-translationally inserted during protein synthesis, probably by a mechanism analogous to that operating during selenocysteine incorporation.

After the double-helical structure of DNA was revealed in 1953, researchers had before them the chance to unlock an utterly compelling puzzle, one for the ages and fundamental to the processes of life: What code linked DNA sequences to each of the 20 amino acids that comprised proteins? Every biology textbook now lists which three RNA bases correspond to which amino acid, but in 1961, that was ...

In this paper I will review the genetic code. An overview of its functions and inner workings will be given. Also the current theories on the origin and emergence of the canonical genetic code from early codes will be explored.

In 1985, we reported that a bacterium, Mycoplasma capricolum, used a deviant genetic code, namely UGA, a "universal" stop codon, was read as tryptophan. This finding, together with the deviant nuclear genetic codes in not a few organisms and a number of mitochondria, shows that the genetic code is not universal, and is in a state of evolution. To account for the changes in codon meanings, we pr...

genome is a curious one, when so far as we know the specificity of those modifications depends on genome-encoded proteins. The hope of believers is that, once the modifications have been made they are 'self-replicating' — they guide similar modification of daughter chromatin. This remains a possibility, but so far at least there is little hard evidence for such self-replication, independent of ...