Image of the ciliate Condylostoma magnum surrounded by concentric rings of genetic code. The red stars mark stop codons.
The genetic code is believed to be strongly conserved through evolution - from the earliest bacteria until today. But researchers from the Institute of Cell Biology of the University of Bern have now found two ciliate species where nature probably can be seen experimenting with the meaning of a codon, the building blocks of genetic communication. We all know language is ambiguous. One word can have several meanings, and different words can sound the same. Still communicating between humans is not a perfect mess - we have found ways to determine the meaning of ambiguous words reliably, by interpreting context. To make things even more complicated, language is a fluent, ever changing system - words can shift their meaning, human language can evolve. Biology has a language to transmit information too, but experts usually refer to it as 'frozen'.
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