February 2012
51 posts
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Writing a New Code for Life? →
On “Star Trek, the aliens often look so human that crew members fall in love with them. But in real life, scientists in the field known as astrobiology can’t be sure alien life would even be carbon-based like us, or use DNA to carry a genetic code.
Some insight now is coming from earthly labs, where scientists are building alternative kinds of genetic codes, and showing how they can evolve.
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Genetic information migrates from plant to plant →
Plant scientists were confounded by the fact that the DNA extracted from the plants’ green chloroplasts sometimes showed the greatest similarities when related species grew in the same area. They tried to explain this phenomenon, for which they coined the term “chloroplast capture” with the assumption that every once in a while those normally sexually incompatible species crossed and produced...
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