It has long been accepted that a gene's protein-coding information is contained in only one of its two DNA strands. But in 22 February Nature, Victor Corces and co-workers at the Department of Biology ...

Transcription and translation are processes a cell uses to make all proteins the body needs to function from information stored in the sequence of bases in DNA. The four bases (C, A, T/U, and G in the ...

How does the cell convert DNA into working proteins? The process of translation can be seen as the decoding of instructions for making proteins, involving mRNA in transcription as well as tRNA. But ...

Scientists look at the base pairs that compose the "rungs" of the DNA ladder to determine a genome's sequence. The success of E. coli bacteria depends on their ability to multiply very rapidly by ...

The origins of millions of tiny proteins in our bodies, previously assumed to be useless, have now been discovered. A study published on February 17 in the journal Molecular Cell describes how these ...

Every time a cell divides, it must copy its entire genome so that each daughter cell inherits a complete set of DNA. During that process, enzymes known as polymerases race along the DNA to copy its ...

Plasmids, small circular DNA molecules found in bacteria, may contain antibiotic-resistance genes and have the ability to replicate independently. Bacteria can transfer these plasmids to one another, ...