Most hypotheses suggest that earlier forms of life had partial genetic codes and used fewer than 20 amino acids. To test these hypotheses, a team from Columbia and Harvard decided to see if they could ...
20 amino acids are usually necessary for life, but scientists successfully deleted one.
I wonder if the pre-LUCA ribosome itself might have been radically different before we fixed on 20 amino acids? Obviously the protein scaffolding would be different, but also it could afford to be a ...