The DNA of nearly all life on Earth contains many redundancies, and scientists have long wondered whether these redundancies served a purpose or if they were just leftovers from evolutionary processes ...

An illustration of E. coli. Scientists have been racing to shrink the genetic code of this bacterium. Kateryna Kon / Science Photo Library via Getty Images The DNA of nearly all life on Earth is made ...

In a giant feat of genetic engineering, scientists have created bacteria that make proteins in a radically different way than all natural species do. By Carl Zimmer At the heart of all life is a code.