An illustration of E. coli. Scientists have been racing to shrink the genetic code of this bacterium. Kateryna Kon / Science Photo Library via Getty Images The DNA of nearly all life on Earth is made ...

Most organisms on Earth have the same basic genetic code, but it comes with some flaws. Scientists sought to work out those errors by creating their own artificial genome, which replaced E. coli’s ...

A group of Chinese scientists has created powerful new tools that allow them to edit large chunks of DNA with incredible accuracy—and without leaving any trace. Using a mix of advanced protein design, ...

The DNA of nearly all life on Earth contains many redundancies, and scientists have long wondered whether these redundancies served a purpose or if they were just leftovers from evolutionary processes ...

We’ve heard of GMOs, but this is ridiculous. Scientists at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology say they’ve engineered a bacteria whose genetic code is more efficient than ...

We have gone further than ever before in creating life that is unlike anything that has evolved naturally. The genome of an Escherichia coli bacterium has been redesigned on a computer to use just 57 ...

In a giant feat of genetic engineering, scientists have created bacteria that make proteins in a radically different way than all natural species do. By Carl Zimmer At the heart of all life is a code.

Liquid culture flasks of bacteria grown in yellow broth covered with tinfoil on a shaker. Bacterial strains needed to be tested every step of the way to create the highly compressed genome. Credit: ...