Scientists in California have created a living organism with genetic code comprised of six letters rather than four, the first time a living organism has been made from artificial genetic building blocks.
Organic life is generally built using the nucleotides A, T, C, and G bound together in a double-helix, but researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have successfully added a single X and Y nucleotide pair to the genetic code of an E. Coli bacterium, according to the New York Times.
TSRI Associate Professor Floyd E. Romesberg, who led the research team, said:
“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. 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.”
The scientists have not yet shown whether the new alien bacterium can produce novel proteins with the extra genetic information, and it needs to feed on synthetic molecules to survive so cannot infect other organisms in its current form.
However, by making these changes to the genetic code, the scientists have for the first time created an ‘alien’ life-form, which breaks into new territory for genetic manipulation from an ethical and legal standpoint.