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NASA nanometer breakthrough uses hot pond protein You couldn't make it up By Paul Hales: Wednesday 27 November 2002, 11:35 NASA SCIENTISTS say they have invented a breakthrough biological method to make ultra-small structures that could be used to produce electronics 10 to 100 times smaller than today’s components. The scientists apparently use modified proteins from 'extremophile' microbes to grow mesh-like structures so small that an electron microscope is needed to see them. These naturally-occurring microbes live in near-boiling, acidic hot springs, according to an article in on-line version of the journal Nature Materials. One of the scientists, Andrew McMillan,...

New word in life's lexiconResearchers find 22nd amino acid in a microbe.24 May 2002JOHN WHITFIELDThere's a new word to life's vocabulary. DNA letters can be rearranged to spell out a 22nd amino acid, researchers have discovered. DNA: the letters of life have more permutations than we thought. © Getty Images The scientists who cracked life's genetic code in the 1950s said that it writes a mere 20 'words' - the amino acids from which the myriad proteins in all life are built. But in 1986 another amino acid was discovered in bacteria. "We thought the 21st was an aberration,...