A, T, G, C and What?
Friday, April 17, 2009 - 15:21
in Biology & Nature
Turns out life has more essential building blocks to play with than previously thought: researchers at Rockefeller University have discovered a new nucleotide in the mammalian DNA code. Remember good ol' adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine? (Remember uracil?) Well, the alphabet of our DNA sequence is about to receive a new letter. Meet 5-hydroxymethylcytosine; we aren't sure what it does or where it's located, but we know it's important -- really important. read more