Despite awe-inspiring diversity, nearly every lifeform – from bacteria to blue whales – shares the same genetic code. How and when this code came about has been the subject of much scientific ...

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 ...

Finally, the team discovered that today's genetic code likely came after other codes that have since gone extinct. The authors argue that the current understanding of how the code evolved is flawed ...