Scientists may be able to add capabilities gradually instead of rebuilding life's operating system all at once.

The genetic code appeared on Earth at the origin of life, and the codes of culture arrived almost four billion years later. For a long time it has been assumed that these are the only codes that exist ...

Learning to read and write is the beginning of literacy, a progression now mirrored in modern genomics. Scientists first read the human genome, a three-billion-letter biological book, in April 2003.