In his 1987 book, “The Evolution of Individuality,” Leo Buss addressed a fundamental biological question: “How could individual multicellular animals (known as metazoans), like sea anemones, insects, frogs, and humans arise?” Buss focused on a key challenge...
A central focus of recent research aimed at developing a vaccine for HIV-1 is the identification of potent broadly-neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). Due to work from several laboratories, many such antibodies have now been identified, produced in quantity as...
Currently, I am on vacation near the beach in South Carolina. Consequently, I have opted for a topic that is bit different than the majority of my monthly commentaries in that it focuses not on a recent original report but instead on a conceptual point made in a book...
In lay publications, it is commonplace for writers to refer to the deoxynucleotide sequence of an individual’s nuclear genome as that individual’s “code” and to the determination of that sequence as “deciphering the code.” Molecular biologists mean by the “genetic...
The term “genetic code” is associated with a measure of ambiguity. For molecular biologists, “genetic code” has historically referred to a table that provides for each messenger RNA ribonucleotide triplet the corresponding amino acid that is incorporated into the...
