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New Nature paper challenges conventional boundaries between kingdoms of life

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From a paper just published online yesterday in Nature,

The work reveals that some conventional boundaries between the kingdoms of life are not as rigid as has been thought. For instance, the researchers suggest that one bacterial lineage synthesizes purine bases — building blocks of DNA and RNA — using enzymes previously thought to exist only in archaea. Meanwhile, three of the archaeal cells sequenced in the study harbour sigma factors, which initiate RNA transcription and have previously been found only in bacteria.

And another novel solution has been uncovered:

The researchers also found a bacterium that has ‘recoded’ the three-letter series of bases UGA — known as the opal stop codon. In almost every other organism, this nucleotide sequence signals the cell to stop translating RNA into protein. But in this organism, it tells the cell to make the amino acid glycine. The team propose to place it into a new bacterial phylum, called Gracilibacteria.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13361

Comments
Would someone mind taking the time to explain what this means in layman's terms?5SilentMiles
July 16, 2013
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“If you consider all the novelty we found in these 201 genomes, it’s astounding, because we’re only looking at a small part of the tremendous diversity out there,” Woyke says.
Well imagine that all created according to their kinds! I never!!!Andre
July 15, 2013
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"A similar recoding has been found in another bacterium, suggesting that the code of life may be more flexible than scientists have assumed."
I read the following from this statement... 1. Common Ancestry is a fairytale. 2. Junk DNA is a fairytale 3. Naturalistic processes are unable to cause this. Maybe that's just me....Andre
July 15, 2013
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