Expanding The Genetic Code: The World’s First Truly Unnatural Organism

ScienceDaily Magazine ^ | 01/14/2003 | American Chemical Society

[forsnax5]

Pushing the genetic code in new directions...

[forsnax5]

Evil geneticists add new protein to helpless microbe! Film at Eleven!

[AntiGuv]

Marking for later reading..

[PatrickHenry]

Mmrruuuhahahahahah!

[This ping list for the evolution -- not creationism -- side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. To be added (or dropped), let me know via freepmail.]

[Physicist]

Proof of intelligent design!!!1!

It's no such thing, actually. I just wanted to be the first of many to float this canard.

[theFIRMbss]

>Expanding The Genetic Code: The World’s First Truly Unnatural Organism

Sooner or later,
everyone will have to learn
what rishathra means...

[tallhappy]

Incorporation of unnatural amino acids is nothing new.

The article does says so, despite its misleading sensationalist title:

The true novelty of the current paper is in biosynthesis -- the ability of the bacterium to make the new amino acid by itself, as opposed to being fed an unnatural amino acid from an outside source.

The questions asked at the beginning are the stuff asked 40 years at the RNA Tie club and the like.

James Watson has a new book out. I'm sure there are other books that go over those times and the ideas.

[Teacher317]

E. coli is notorious for its ability to quickly reproduce, which could conjure images of mutant bacteria running wild. "We crippled the organism's ability to biosynthesize leucine [one of the 20 essential amino acids] to avoid any risk that the organism could propagate outside a controlled lab setting," Anderson says. "Our unnatural organism will always live in the lab. We have no intention of putting it out in the wild or in commercial products where it could 'get out.'"

LOL... apparently they missed the central theme of Jurassic Park.

[aruanan]

"Why did life settle on 20 amino acids?" asks Ryan Mehl, Ph.D., previously a researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and now on the faculty of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. "Would more amino acids give you a better organism -- one that could more effectively adapt if placed under selective pressure?"

No, it'll just give you a Cadillac with those stuck-on gold carriage lights.

Simply having another amino acid available doesn't mean that it will be used unless a particular pre-existing gene codes for its use in a protein. The two ways a pre-existing gene could code for its use are 1. a spontaneous point mutation (or several of them, depending on how different the codon is from those for the 20 standard AAs) results in the amino acid substitution in the pre-existing gene, 2. someone deliberately engineers the mutations into a specific gene. The significance of this still has to be seen in the context of standard molecular biological techniques in which amino acid substitutions, deletions, or insertions are cloned into existing genes all the time in order to elucidate the wild type function of the protein in question. The story above would sort of be like someone deciding to include some completely unrelated building materials along with those for a pre-fab house in the hope of seeing whether or how the contractor will incorporate them into pre-existing building plans that don't specify their use.

[egarvue]

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[general_re]

Perhaps the article itself is more interesting to you.

[tallhappy]

Why would you say it is not intelligent design? That is, of course, exactly what it is.

Studies like this do not address those questions. They are engineering feats that eventually may be of large value.

Read the comments of Anderson in the last paragraph to see what the article is about in implications. I, for one, appreciate that they've done this.

[aruanan]

LOL... apparently they missed the central theme of Jurassic Park.

Uh, the central theme of the fictional Jurassic Park came from the reality of the leucine-less E coli bacteria used in molecular biological research.

[tallhappy]

Jurassic Park is make believe.

[tallhappy]

Thanks for the link.

[general_re]

My pleasure. Unfortunately, it'll have to be our (and a few others here, I expect) little secret, since I don't think that link is available to the general (subscription-less) public ;)

[Oberon]

Jurassic Park is make believe.

With a clear message, too... kind of like Aesop's Fables.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC read later

[Teacher317]

Jurassic Park is make believe.

Suuuuure it is.

HA! You probably think that the moon landing was real!

/sarcastic humor>