Expanding the genetic code in vertebrates

Synthetic Biology Unnatural amino acids can be incorporated into target proteins by using a transfer RNA (tRNA)—aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase pair that adds an unnatural amino acid at an amber stop codon. The strategy has been used in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and for generating transgenic invertebrates. Chen et al. have succeeded in integrating a construct coding for the unnatural amino acid p -azido-phenylalanine (AzF) into the mouse...