Stripped down bacterium functions with one less amino acid than the rest of life on Earth
By 
Tim Wogan2026-05-11T13:43:00
Deep learning models used to understand how isoleucine could be replaced in proteins without disrupting their structures
A bacterium whose ribosome is made up of proteins containing just 19 amino acids instead of the 20 used by all life on Earth today has been engineered by US researchers. The work constitutes a key step towards a complete organism that uses fewer amino acids than a natural one – something that could be useful for synthetic biology and provide researchers with the opportunity to study the evolution of organisms with compressed genomes.