New probe technology illuminates the activation of light-sensing cells
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 11:28
in Biology & Nature
Ultimately, Charles Darwin's "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful" can be boiled down to a scant 20 or so amino acids, the basic building blocks of life. From this parsimonious palette, nature paints the proteins that make up the wild diversity of life on earth, from the simplest bacteria to the most complicated structure in the known universe -- the human brain. Now, research reveals a new technique for tagging proteins with non-natural amino acids to scrutinize details about how they function.