"Hmmm...Unnatural life forms...
Posted on 05/13/2014 4:27:26 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, or TSRI, in San Diego, California, have created a new living organism whose genetic code includes six letters, instead of four, and that added pair of DNA letters, researchers say, is “not found in nature.”
In a study, published in Nature on Wednesday, scientists described the new bacterium as the first life form to contain artificial genetic building blocks. According to them, the new finding could lead to organisms that might help scientists develop medicines or industrial products that are impossible to produce using cells containing only natural genetic code, The New York Times reported.
“Life on Earth in all its diversity is encoded by only two pairs of DNA bases, A-T and C-G, and what we’ve made is an organism that stably contains those two plus a third, unnatural pair of bases,” Floyd E. Romesberg, a TSRI associate professor who lead the research team, said in a statement. “This shows that other solutions to storing information are possible and, of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications—from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology.”
As part of the study, the scientists at TSRI added a pair of artificial “X” and “Y” nucleotides to the genetic code of the common bacterium E. coli, and so far, the bacteria appears to be reproducing normally, replicating the X-Y pair along with the natural nucleotides, the NY Times reported.
According to the scientists, their next step would be to demonstrate the in-cell transcription of the new, expanded-alphabet DNA into the Ribonucleic acid (RNA) that feeds the protein-making machinery of cells.
“In principle, we could encode new proteins made from new, unnatural amino acids—which would give us greater power than ever to tailor protein therapeutics and diagnostics and laboratory reagents
(Excerpt) Read more at trove.com ...
I love the exchange:
“Get everything ready!”
“For what?”
Intelligent design, hm? Nice.
What could possibly go wrong?
If God didn’t approve this,I doubt it would have happened.
Now what test could be done to prove it was designed?
Point being you can believe in evolution, you can believe in creation, you can believe in both, you can believe in neither.
But you can not prove anything.. and its incorrect to teacher one or the other is a proven fact to the exclusion of the other.
... why the rant ?????......because both sides in the evolution creation debate piss me off because both parties practice bad science..and teach bad science.....
...Wisdom is knowing you know nothing (in the total scheme of things in the universe)
Have you considered the possibility that she is sitting on the cooler so nobody can get to the beer?
what could possibly go wrong?
only the most horrific event in the history of the planet.
cool! let’s do it!
/face-palm
I`d be more afraid it turns out like The Stand.
It either IS or isn't.
My son is a scientist, Biology/Chemistry, and when he graduated I asked him ‘please, never work at something like this’...
These mad scientists could create something that mutates and is harmful to all of us.
There's a thought...
Maybe there’s another normal...
Or helpful
“Or helpful”
I think the thread “title” slanted my view to the ‘bad’ instead of the ‘good’.
Big trouble if they treat DNA as a legos construct.
Well, there’s always at least
two ways to look at things.
You have to agree that “Scientists create new alien life form with DNA” sounds more scary than “Scientists look for a cure for ‘whatever’”.
I remember some old Frankenstein type of movie that had a pitiful half-human creature down in a pit. They had created it and it suffered endlessly. That’s why I dislike the idea of what this Title says.
It will be interesting to see what becomes of this. I’m no worried though, God hand is in this.
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