The nucleic acid molecules inherited by the living cell bear the plan of all the cell's protein molecules. It now appears that another kind of nucleic acid plays a key role in translating the plan ...

The simplest way to decipher the code would be to start with an mRNA molecule of known sequence, use it to direct the synthesis of a protein, and then determine the amino acid sequence of the ...

A nucleic acid is a long molecule made up of smaller molecules called nucleotides. Nucleic acids were discovered in 1868, when twenty-four-year-old Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher isolated a ...

But proteins rarely act alone. Proteins often aggregate into large multiprotein complexes, for one thing. (See “Cracking the Complex,” The Scientist, November 2015.) They also bind to small molecules, ...

Transfer RNA (tRNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA) are involved in the translation of mRNA into proteins. Various non-coding RNAs also play important roles in regulating gene expression and cellular ...