'Fishy' clue helps establish how proteins evolve
Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - 12:07
in Biology & Nature
Three billion years ago, a "new" amino acid was added to the alphabet of 20 that commonly make up proteins in organisms today. Now researchers at Yale and the University of Tokyo have demonstrated how this rare amino acid — and, by example, other amino acids — made its way into the menu for protein synthesis. The study appeared in the December 31 advance online publication of the journal Nature.