How bird poop fuelled an agricultural revolution and led to the discovery of the first nucleotide: guanine.
All tagged nucleotides
How bird poop fuelled an agricultural revolution and led to the discovery of the first nucleotide: guanine.
The hunt for the building blocks of life involved soiled bandages, a hundred kilos of cow pancreas and a lot of heartache.
There are far more than four letters in the genetic alphabet. Starting with experiments at a nuclear research facility in the 1940s, we now know of more than 150 modified nucleotides, hugely extending the biological information inside cells.