Slashdot Log In
Scientists Create Synthesized DNA Bases
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jun 27, 2008 12:48 PM
from the and-mother-nature-is-pissed dept.
from the and-mother-nature-is-pissed dept.
Iddo Genuth writes to tell us that researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego have created two artificial DNA bases in an effort to "expand biology's potential." "In the future, [chemist Floyd] Romesberg envisions manipulating the genetic code of bacteria in order to assemble better drugs or even man-made proteins. Until now, the bases only work in bacteria, so human augmentation is currently not possible. Another option is to use alpha and beta to help construct nanomachines to be used for drug delivery. 'This is like jumping from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age,' Romesberg says. 'It takes time to figure out how best to use metal.'" Update 18:10 GMT by SM: Roger writes to share the NewScientist link with a bit more information. There is also the original release text for consideration.
Related Stories
[+]
First DNA Molecule Constructed from Mostly Synthetic Components 188 comments
ScienceDaily is reporting that Japanese chemists have created the world's first DNA molecule comprised of almost entirely artificial components. The breakthrough could lead to advances in both medicine and technology, possibly utilizing the massive storage capacity of DNA. "In the new study, Masahiko Inouye and colleagues point out that scientists have tried for years to develop artificial versions of DNA in order to extend its amazing information storage capabilities. As the genetic blueprint of all life forms, DNA uses the same set of four basic building blocks, known as bases, to code for a variety of proteins used in cell functioning and development. Until now, scientists have only been able to craft DNA molecules with one or a few artificial parts, including certain bases."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
I want my Vitamin C! (Score:4, Interesting)
Can we get back our Vitamin C gene again? I would love being able to eat less fruit... Scurvy sucks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This has implications beyond the delivery of drugs. Drugs act at the protein level, but imagine a delivery mechanism that does not require a protein receptor, but instead acts at the DNA filament level.
This is HUGE news.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can we get back our Vitamin C gene again? I would love being able to eat less fruit... Scurvy sucks.
Apparently a war has already been delcared on Scurvy, and it appears to almost be won [internetwks.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hahahah, it's so funny, because reading about the history of Scurvy, people actually thought this way for awhile.
Personally, I really think it'd be awesome if we could just repair our Vitamin C gene, and generate Vitamin C ourselves again... but then we also need to fix the gene that processes uric acid, so that we don't fill up on stuff doing the job of Vitamin C... since high uric acid levels have been associated with Type II diabetes, it might just effect a reduction in diabetes in humans.
Re:I want my Vitamin C! (Score:4, Funny)
Can we get back our Vitamin C gene again? I would love being able to eat less fruit... Scurvy sucks.
Have you ever tried coconut rum and fresh OJ? You'll never bitch about drinking your fruits again.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Can we get back our Vitamin C gene again? I would love being able to eat less fruit... Scurvy sucks.
Have you ever tried coconut rum and fresh OJ? You'll never bitch about drinking your fruits again.
Sorry, I prefer my alcohol in the form of Riesling wines. I haven't suffered from Scurvy yet, so I'm apparently getting enough vitamin C, but I don't really eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, so... not so sure.
Anyways, making fruits and veggies a more optional part of our diet, since we can make our own vitamin C might have a positive impact on our quality of life. (Of course, it puts the Vitamin C Herbal Supplement people out of business, but hey, they're just the new patent medicine anyways, so...)
Re:I want my Vitamin C! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Pretty reckless with your precious fluilds, there, buddy.
I only drink grain alcohol and rain water.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever tried coconut rum and fresh OJ? You'll never bitch about drinking your fruits again.
Just wait until he starts bitching about his liver. :P
Why does no one look at my name? Is it just standard presumption that everyone on slashdot is a guy, even when their login is "snowgirl"?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nicknames are meaningless. The big giveaway that you're a girl was that you drink Rieslings.
That shit's for ladies and, uh, whoever plays one on the Internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Duh, there are no girls on the internet.
(I for one welcome our mammary-bearing overlords?)
Re: (Score:2)
lol, funny :P
Re: (Score:2)
You're not one of those guys who play as a girl on online games are you?
*sigh* I've apparently found out that such guys don't exist on European servers. It's likely that Europeans being less sex-retentive than us don't provide such fundamental benefits to females that we enjoy here in America that they don't see a benefit to acting like girls to get stuff.
Here's how to tell the boys from the girls when they're both playing female characters: girls don't expect nor ask for stuff from guys. If you give us stuff after we've gotten to know each other, then hey, cool... but if you
Re: (Score:2)
Are you serious? Could there be anything more delicious than fruit? Try growing your own strawberries some time, they're positively orgasmic. Fruit is the best.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't hate the fruit! I just hate that every other animal in the world can synthesize their own Vitamin C, but we can't!
It's about EQUALITY, not wanting to get rid of fruit. I do like fruit; I have some cherries right now, and they're absolutely divine.
So, in all, I love fruit, I don't want to get rid of it... I just want to get rid of Scurvy...
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
The Island of Dr. Moreau called; they want their genetic manipulation with unintended consequences back. I told the caller to take a number.
Parent
Follow the link at the end of the article (Score:4, Informative)
There is a more technical explanation in the link [scripps.edu] at the end of the article.
Article? (Score:3, Insightful)
These are bases not amino acids (Score:5, Interesting)
He's adding new bases which have no coding to amino acids. I don't see the purpose of this. Is it just for adding a trace or marker in DNA?
All the bases do are code for amino acids and it's the amino acid sequence which accounts for a protein's shape. In the end it's the protein's shape that matters for chemical interactions.
Re:These are bases not amino acids (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:These are bases not amino acids (Score:5, Interesting)
You're totally right. This is such a non-story and frankly mildly offensive in how full of himself the scientist is with sweeping comments like that.
As it stands currently, the amount of genetic degenerecy in amino acid coding means that they would easily have those double and tripled coded amino acids switched to something else. They could potentially add another 20-30 new amino acids with absolutely no change in the number or form of the base pairs used.
Its like finding a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, will never exist, and serves no purpose even if it was found. But apparently its equivalent from going to the iron age from the bronze age. Ha!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure the only use for this is going to be marking genes, probably just to keep track of who owns the patents.
The first genetic DRM?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
My 2c.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, while the science here is kind of neat, it's not the biggest news in the world. The article title does not at all reflect what's newsworthy here, anyway. Scientists have been creating synthetic and/or modified nucleotides for decades and successfully incorporating them in to DNA and RNA. The news is that they found a synthetic base that can be copied by DNA polymerase. This is the enzyme that copies your DNA, putting an A next to a T on the opposite strand, a C opposite a G, a T opposite an A, and
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
TFA's TFA mentions information storage in DNA, which makes sense as this basically moves from base-4 to base-5 (The base pairs up with itself, so it's only one new base) thereby improving storage density. They also did some work to evolve a polymerase that replicates the DNA with the new base.
DNA (single strands) and RNA also fold into themselves, and there is some evidence that the folding affects some mechanisms in the cell. Modifying them with these self-binding pairs could probably be hacked up to chang
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
However, this makes it base-6 instead of base-5 or the current base-4. If you recall your high-school biology class, the base pairs only exist in two combinations, but in a total of four permutations. There's adenine-thymine, thymine-adenine, cytosine
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I read it before the update was posted so didn't see the extra article. I wrote base-5 because the first article made it out to be symmetric, so it was only one extra permutation.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Grossly simplifying, you read off codons (via mRNA, etc.) generating peptides so that you can build up proteins, etc. Some of those codons turn on or off transcription to amino acids.
As noted in the article the fidelity of transcription of these is lower than conventional DNA. So perhaps they could make perfectly suitable markers for areas you want to provoke a mutation at a higher rate, perhaps dropping them into large introns to encourage mutation in those areas.
The 3FB self-pair also expands the vocabula
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:These are bases not amino acids (Score:4, Informative)
All the bases do are code for amino acids
That's actually not true. A lot of DNA bases are important in mediating binding to proteins, such as RNA or DNA polymerase, histones, etc. Other bases are important in RNA-based regulator mechanisms, such as anti-terminators.
So the truth is that although we can't really say what we can do with these extra bases right now, the possibilities extend way beyond making new proteins and have many implications for regulation. Why is regulation important? Because differential gene expression is the fundamental principle that allows for cell differentiation and mediating responses to external change.
And for the record, IAAB (I am a biologist).
Parent
Interesting but (Score:2)
Interesting, but I'd rather we have a better understanding of current genetic material and manipulation thereof before we go creating new bases that don't exist in nature.
This might just be an approrpiate time for the 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' tag.
Still missing critical information (Score:5, Informative)
For those of you who forgot your biology, 3 DNA consecutive DNA base pairs (called a codon) are translated into a single amino acid. (Khorana, Holley and Nirenberg won the 1968 Noble prize in medicine for figuring this out and determining the mapping [codondevices.com] from base pairs to amino acids)
So, after reading the technical article [scripps.edu], it says that DNA polymerase can bind to the new base pairs (allowing it to replicate), but it doesn't say what amino acids (if any) these new base pairs code for. That's important information because this alleged breakthrough is useless if it doesn't so something useful where proteins are concerned.
Re: (Score:2)
Also keep in mind that the coding for base triplets into amino acids is governed by tRNA, which are short segments of RNA that conform to provide one end that holds an amino acid and the other end (actually the middle, but folded over) that has a three-base segment that binds to mRNA during translation. tRNA are coded in the cell's DNA, so if you really wanted to change the translation table, you would just change the genes that produce tRNA in the first place.
It is possible, however, that the idea here is
Wow. (Score:2)
Two new DNA bases? In terms of potential gene expression - this is like the art world getting two new visible base colors, which can mix with the usual red, green, blue, black and white in new ways to create further complex colors... oh, yes it'll take a very long time to figure out what they mean in all these contexts, but the potential there is absolutely huge.
We're still limited to the same physical limits we've ever had - but the potential for efficient complexity and new expressions using genetic syst
Re: (Score:2)
Cool - If that's all that is, then yeah, not quite the potential I thought it could be.
Ryan Fenton
Alpha and Beta? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or, since the Neocons are bound to oppose this anyway (due to its scientific nature), ADAM and STEVE.
Alpha and Beta (Score:2)
Old News (Score:4, Interesting)
Where is the whatcanpossiblygowrong tag, like last time? Have the Luddites left, already?
Bronze Age (Score:4, Insightful)
'It takes time to figure out how best to use metal.'
I don't think it took too much time to figure out that the best use of bronze was to make it sharp and run someone through with it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When you're used to working with just stone, how to make stuff with metal would not neccessarily be intuitively obvious.
In the brave new world of patented genetics ... (Score:2, Funny)
I for one... (Score:2)
Welcome our new genetically modified bacterial overlords...
(sorry... I had to...)
Overkill (Score:2)
The use of four base sequences probably optimizes the generation complexity to the coding/mainentance complexity. Six or eight base sequences are probably less energy efficient or less stable or something.
Although that might be a good approach for making new life forms that don't escape and outcompete native lifeforms.
"DNA Origami" (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
You want to BE one? okay.
But you can already do that, the surgery's just a bit expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
You know that's now what I meant...
See? it was such a good idea, you decided that was what you meant in the first place after all.
Now I just need a couple more, and a videocamera. PROFIT!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Has this not already been posted?
Yes, it has. [slashdot.org]
Tagged oldnews.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would suggest your logic here is flawed or at the very least belies a bit of a gap in understanding how evolution works.
All the other folk who have commented that this is like giving artists new colors nobody can see are perhaps a bit closer.
Once we got started with anything even close to DNA, I would imagine we were more or less locked into that pattern. Evolution branches more so than tries all permutations and possibilities. It seems far more likely that once life got going with all the support syste