All living things use the genetic code to “translate” DNA-based genetic information into proteins, which are the main working molecules in cells. Precisely how the complex process of translation arose in the earliest stages of life on Earth more than four billion years ago has long been mysterious, but two theoretical biologists have now made a significant advance in resolving this mystery.
Charles Carter, PhD, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine, and Peter Wills, PhD, an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Auckland, used advanced statistical methods to analyze how modern translational molecules fit together to perform their job—linking short sequences of genetic information to the protein building blocks they encode.