A newly discovered microbe ignores the biological rules for building proteins
A unique microbe found in a wastewater treatment plant challenges the universal laws of genetics by assigning multiple meanings to the same genetic instructions for building proteins.
A microscopic organism named Blastocrithidia nonstop uses a genetic code that defies traditional biology. In almost all life forms, specific stop codons signal the cell to stop building a protein, but this microbe interprets these signals as instructions to add more amino acids.
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