On May 27, 1961, Heinrich Matthaei, a postdoc working with NIH scientist Marshal Nirenberg, placed synthetic polyuracil RNA into 20 test tubes to see what it would produce. Each tube contained ...

Scientists have marveled at the ingenuity of the DNA code since it was first deciphered in the early sixties, but now it appears that there is much more to it than previously known. A research team at ...

The genetics of a marine protozoan may overturn one of the long-held tenets of protein synthesis. According to conventional wisdom, the genetic code is unambiguous: each DNA triplet, or codon, ...

Scientists have long known that human genes spring into action through instructions delivered by the precise order of our DNA, directed by the four different types of individual links, or "bases," ...

The genetic code is the recipe for life, and provides the instructions for how to make proteins, generally using just 20 ...

James Watson, the scientist who co-discovered the structure of DNA, died on Nov. 6, 2025, at the age of 97 On a foggy Saturday morning in 1953, a tall, skinny 24-year-old man fiddled with shapes he ...

James Watson Helped Crack DNA's Code, Sparking Medical Advances and Ethical Debates On a foggy Saturday morning in 1953, a tall, skinny 24-year-old man fiddled with shapes he had cut out of cardboard.