Bioengineering advances have made it possible to fundamentally alter the genetic codes of organisms. However, the evolutionary consequences of expanding an organism's genetic code with a noncanonical amino acid are poorly understood. Here we show that bacteriophages evolved on a host that incorporates 3-iodotyrosine at the amber stop codon acquire neutral and beneficial mutations to this new amino acid in their proteins, demonstrating that an expanded genetic code increases evolvability.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3932624 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1450 | DOI Listing |
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