| Universal Code (biology) |
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In all known living creatures, instructions for making proteins are encoded in DNA. Three bases of DNA (the "codon") select an amino acid. In the 1960s, biologists and chemists worked out which particular amino acid is selected by each codon -- the Genetic Code . They were surprised to discover that this code was the same for every living creature they investigated -- plant, animal, bacteria, etc. This evidence supports the hypothesis of Common Descent . In the 1990s, it was discovered that the genetic code was not universal after all -- quite a few organisms use genetic codes that have one or two differences from what was once thought to be the universal code, now called the "canonical code" -- [http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/BioLinks/gencode.html , {Link without Title} . See also International Code Of Zoological Nomenclature . |
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