Enlarge / Cloned piglets that are engineered to be useful for organ transplants to humans. (credit: Getty Images / Staff) Last week, when we reported on the first pig-to-human heart transplant, we complained that the commercial company behind the transplant wasn’t more forthcoming about the genetic engineering that had converted the pig into a viable […]
Enlarge / A cartoon of the process that translates the genetic code|code calculatordecoder} in DNA into a protein. (credit: BSIP / Getty Images ) All living things on Earth use a version of the same genetic code. Every cell makes proteins using the same 20 amino acids. Ribosomes, the particular protein-making machinery within cells, read […]
Enlarge / On the outside, these heavily engineered bacteria look no different from their normal peers. (credit: Raphael Gaillarde / Getty Images) Many of the fundamental features of life don’t necessarily have to be the way they are. Chance plays a major role in evolution, and there are alternate paths that were never explored, simply […]