Loophole found in genetic traffic laws

Altered molecule causes protein-making machinery to run stop signs

Biology’s rules may be full of exceptions, but a new discovery has uncovered a violation in a rule so fundamental that geneticists call it the central dogma.

The molecular equivalent of writing one RNA letter in a different font can change the way a cell’s protein-building machinery interprets the genetic code, Yitao Yu and John Karijolich of the University of Rochester in New York report in the June 16 Nature.