GRO: New life form that reads a new language in the letters of DNA

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Plazma Inferno!, Aug 19, 2016.

  1. Plazma Inferno! Ding Ding Ding Ding Administrator

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    A team of chemical biologists at the University of Washington is working on a new type of genetically engineered life: organisms that read a new language of DNA. That is, they have the same letters in their DNA—A,C,G, and T—but they read and interpret them in a totally different way.
    They have published a paper the the journal Science detailing their pursuit. Their goal is to build a "genomically recoded organism" (GRO), immune to every single virus on Earth.
    The team is currently focusing on three major applications. The first is virus resistance. When viruses infect a host cell, they essentially inject their genome and hijack the cell to create more viruses. But this only works if both the virus and the cell are speaking the same genetic language. Since GROs speak a different language, the virus's genetic instructions to replicate itself would be misread, and the virus couldn't complete its life cycle.
    The second is to introduce new biochemical capabilities that are not available in natural organisms. Almost all life shares a common genetic code, which explains how to translate genetic information into proteins. These proteins are composed of amino acids, and there are only 20 amino acids that are routinely used to make proteins. But there are plenty of unnatural amino acids that have useful chemical properties distinct from those 20. Thanks to great work done in a several other laboratories, we know of over 150 unnatural amino acids that we could use to expand protein function. People are already using these unnatural amino acids to make better drugs for treating disease.
    Finally, the third application is bio-containment. Since these modified organisms may exhibit broad viral resistance, we want to make sure they can't escape into the world and mix with natural life. In addition to continuing to use our physical firewalls (keeping the organism inside of a laboratory, for example) we can also build genetic firewalls for GROs. To put it simply, we can redesign essential proteins so that the GRO can only survive if it has access to a certain unnatural amino acid that it won't find in the wild.

    http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/interviews/a22430/different-dna-language/

    Paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6301/819
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    If that can be done it would be amazing, indeed. But question is if you could build a self-sustaining organism. After all, our current DNA coding (shared by all extant organisms) was *naturally selected* from what may have been a host of prior natural trials during the evolution of life in our specific ecosphere.
     
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  5. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Slightly different arrangement of the individual DNA components would work. Once the current won out (or merely was first), other arrangements do not occur in any living creature.

    In Metamagical Themas (page 691) Douglas R Hofstadter claims that DNA coding is somewhat arbitrary.

    Metamagical Themas is a rearrangement of Mathematical Games. Hofstadter took over Martin Gardner’s section of Scientific American
     
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  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Wow...now we have 5 genetic carriers. Fractal, RNA, DNA, GRO, and XNA (the same thing?)
    http://io9.gizmodo.com/5903221/meet-xna-the-first-synthetic-dna-that-evolves-like-the-real-thing

    and this somewhat disturbing article;
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/xna-molecules-synthetic-dna-life_n_1440823.html

    In a sense I find this a little scary, looking at it on a global scale. For organisms with long lifespans this is not so much of a problem. It takes a long time from generation to generation. But small organisms such as insects, who are probably the oldest species on earth, may have very short lifespans and produce entire new generations in just a few weeks and are airborne and not containable.

    OTOH, I can imagine a genetically altered honeybee, which is resistant to whatever is currently killing all the bees and let them continue to do what they do best, pollinate flowering plants.
     
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2016
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    If we can do this in a lab, consider the probability of life forms on other planets on a cosmic scale, as Robert Hazen so clearly presented at the Carnegie Institute!
     

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