Cover Picture: Recoding the Genetic Code with Selenocysteine (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1/2014)

Named after Selene, goddess of the moon selenocysteine (Sec) is unique in its unrivaled catalytic power and its insertion into proteins by redefinition of specific UGA stop codons to Sec. In their Communication on page 319 ff., D. Söll, P. O'Donoghue et al. describe the engineering of the Sec-insertion machinery to redefine nearly all 64 codons. Here, the ring-shaped decameric selenocysteine synthase SeIA is essential in providing tRNA-bound Sec as the central building block for selenoprotein translation.