G’s that look like I’s, F’s that sound like “Waw,” and Q’s that look like monkeys — man, was our alphabet a mess. That’s because many of our letters began as Egyptian hieroglyph symbols 4,000 years ...
For the first time, scientists have expanded life's genetic alphabet, by inserting two unnatural, man-made "letters" into a bacterium's DNA, and by showing that the cell's machinery can copy them. The ...