Word: amino
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Even more remarkable, each of the four bases represents a letter in the genetic code. The three-letter "words" they spell, reading in sequence along either side of the ladder, are instructions to the cell on how to assemble amino acids into the proteins essential to the structure and life of its host. Each complete DNA "sentence" is a gene, a discrete segment of the DNA string responsible for ordering the production of a specific protein...
...snap for the clever machinery of a cell. But for mere scientists it is a formidable and time-consuming task. For instance, a snippet of DNA might read ACGGTAGAT, a message that researchers can decipher rather easily. It codes for a sequence of three of the 20 varieties of amino acids that constitute the building blocks of proteins. But the entire genome of even the simplest organism dwarfs that snippet. The genetic blueprint of the lowly E. coli bacterium, for one, is more than 4.5 million base pairs long. For a microscopic yeast plant, the length is 15 million units...
Displaying stereoscopic slides of one protein structure, the 1976 Nobel laureate explained that enzymes are composed of proteins, or amino acid chains, and speed up chemical reactions in living organisms...
...first form of terrestrial life by a comet that impacted billions of years ago. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA molecule's structure, and Organic Chemist Leslie Orgel have proposed a less fanciful theory: Comets brought with them the chemical precursors of life, in the form of amino acids and other molecules...
Ultimately, the dentist's principal instrument of agony, the drill, may be used less often because of a substance called Caridex 100, developed at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. Caridex, which is gradually being introduced around the country, is an amino-acid solution that dissolves tooth decay, leaving behind a clean, sturdy area that can be filled with little or no drilling. However, the method is not suitable for all cavities...