{"id":9620,"date":"2026-05-22T12:26:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/?p=9620"},"modified":"2026-05-22T12:29:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:29:41","slug":"lei-lei-the-evolution-of-the-first-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/lei-lei-the-evolution-of-the-first-code\/","title":{"rendered":"A new paper co-authored by Lei Lei &#8220;The Evolution of the First Code&#8221; published in Genes\u00a02026,\u00a017(5), 544;\u00a0https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/genes17050544"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Lei Lei, Professor of Molecular Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, recently published a research article on the evolution of the first genetic code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lei, L., de Farias, S.T., and Burton, Z.F. (2026) The Evolution of the First Code.\u00a0 <em>Genes<\/em>\u00a02026, 17 (5), 544.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/genes17050544\">https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/genes17050544<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this article, Lei and his collaborators utilized sequence data to reconstruct key steps in establishing the first genetic code on Earth.&nbsp; The first code on Earth was surprisingly ordered, and the few apparent deviations from the regular order can yet be explained. Early in the evolution of the code, innovation was more strongly selected than accuracy. The code froze, however, because of evolving fidelity mechanisms. A historical record was documented in tRNA and in the genetic code structure and has been preserved in living organism sequences. AARSome structure describes the first code evolution more adequately than tRNAomes.&nbsp; This research is instrumental toward our understanding of the origin of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lei Lei, Professor of Molecular Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, recently published a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-9620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications-and-awards"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9620"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9622,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9620\/revisions\/9622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9620"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.une.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=9620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}