Artificial Bases Added to DNA 362
holy_calamity writes "Researchers have successfully added two 'unnatural' DNA letters to the code of life. They created two artificial base pairs that are treated as normal by an enzyme that replicates and fixes DNA inside cells. This raises the prospect of engineering life forms with genetic code not possible within nature, allowing new kinds of genetic engineering."
Artificial bases would have what effect? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious as to whether this will result in new kinds of proteins, or whether new amino acids will be required to be built, or what other effects might crop up.
It's interesting, don't get me wrong--but how -practical- is it?
Re:On the topic of "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" (Score:5, Interesting)
engineer tougher DNA (Score:5, Interesting)
Genetic engineering WILL get scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:On the topic of "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" (Score:3, Interesting)
Because here on
Re:On the topic of "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" (Score:2, Interesting)
My paranoia (and I own it as paranoia) is not that some mad scientist will do evil experiments. It's that perfectly "normal" and "rational" citizens running a large corporation will fsck up the planet by using this kind of technology in a stupid way on an industrial scale. By, say, monocropping all the wheat grown in North America with some GMO strain that can eat Roundup for breakfast. Or something like that.
The Audience is a Harsh Mistress (Score:5, Interesting)
Plus, let's face it -- there are articles where the tag is wonderfully appropriate as ironic snark, but this one isn't it. I mean, it's great for articles like this one about mass production of micro fission reactors [slashdot.org] or this one about the proposed future of military robots. [slashdot.org] Sometimes, it's funny when the very proposition of something going wrong is itself funny like with an article on a robot controlled by a monkey's brain. [slashdot.org]
However, dangers and recklessness involved in this project are next to nil. There's no irony and clever cynicism here. There's just the mindless misapplication of an overdone meme in a manner that makes Slashdot look like a bunch of technology fearing idiots. So yeah. While I don't think it's worth getting so worked up about, it is a stupidly applied tag and a failed attempt at humor.
Re:In regards to "been done before" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Gene manipulation (Score:2, Interesting)
Combine this with work going on to introduce organisms that use proteins and enzymes that are beyond the range of all of earth's current life forms, and you have the basis for creating life that is impervious to all known biological agents.
So, while few of us fear Angus beef or white-shelled eggs, many of us fear pandemics of viruses that will kill hundreds of millions, maybe billions, and if engineered with these new components, might be unstoppable.
Re:On the topic of "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure what you're talking about. [slashdot.org] I didn't look through them all to see if any are more recent, but you tagged something as recently as Monday. Glancing through your tags, I have actually seen some of your tags up there; so it doesn't seem to be a matter of the tags not showing up. Is it that it just doesn't work sometimes? I've had that happen.
Right or wrong, with tags like "who cares", "thievingcunts", and "slownewsdaymeansdumbasfuck", it wouldn't surprise me if your 'tag karma' (or an arbitrary decision on the part of an editor) prevented you from tagging articles or from those tags showing up.
As for moderating, I'm with you. Excellent karma, frequent meta-moderation, and regular posting (in the past anyway) seemed to be a fast track to never having moderator points again for me.
Re:engineer tougher DNA (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally speaking, viruses that insert their DNA into eukaryotic DNA don't have a particular place that they do so: they get their DNA into the cell, and it then inserts itself randomly in some bit of exposed DNA. See, eukaryotic DNA is very tightly bound to accessory proteins that protect/maintain it and hold it in some sort of to my knowledge poorly understood large-scale organizational scheme that constitutes a chromosome, so it's not like you can get to just anywhere on the DNA, but the parts you CAN get to might not be consistent, depending on whether that particular DNA bit is being transcribed at the moment, or repaired, or what have you. So what happens is that viruses stick their DNA all *over* the place, and the vast majority of them are indeed in no-ops or unread/untranscribed sections and just sit there -- which is where all the endogenous retrovirus stuff we read about comes from. Complete replication of the DNA is rare -- it only happens when the cell needs to divide for some reason. Small-scale scanning and replication is very common because a cell's day-to-day enzyme turnover requires it. But that small scanning is less likely to hit the area where the virus DNA is because of the sheer size of the genome.
Eventually it'd be nice to migrate to a whole different genetic code and support enzymes, because then viruses would be instantly nonviable, but that's a long, long ways off. However, this research is the first step: if we had a wholly different DNA, and re-engineered the enzymes that make transfer RNA, which convert the messages read from DNA into protein, we could retain all the protein-handling enzymes we have, and everything they make, and 'only' swap out the DNA and RNA suite. That's still an enormous problem, but it's like 0.01% of the problem of trying to engineer new proteins and a whole metabolism based on them.
Any Tool = Practical (Score:3, Interesting)
Things could even go as far as to impose government controls on engineered organisms, forcing such identification mechanisms for forensics purposes. This would be handy since you'd never mistake the engineered protiens for anything natural. It would also have serious patent control implications, as tracing the linage of a "pirated hybrid organism" would be possible.
Artifical base pairs could also help with more exotic DNA-based tools that only communicate in and amongst themselves, thereby side-stepping any natural DNA machinery about. This would be useful for medical purposes, or even to harden the engineered organism against swapping DNA with it's wild/natural ancestor types. For instance: any swap with a wild bacterium could be set to have a high likelyhood of killing both would-be hybrids.
Another set of possibilities is along the lines of bettering mother nature: to have a set of DNA-like building blocks that are more robust and capable than the natural ones. Better radiation endurance, for one, sticks out in my mind as a potentially useful attribute. I'm sure there's other tricks protiens can be taught.
As for side-effects: who knows. We might get another branch off the tree of life out of this, or sound the march towards post-humanism, or we might just get a bunch of really fragile microbes suitable for only the most niche of engineering and science tasks.
Re:MOD PARENT UP! (Score:1, Interesting)
Consider this.. the thread is about new base pairs for stable DNA strands. This entire line of comments is one long bitch session about the perceived injustice of the tagging system. Does that qualify as being OffTopic? Absolutely. Does that mean your points are invalid? No, of course not. Just that they don't belong here in this particular discussion because they don't have anything to do with DNA nucleotides whatsoever. The tagging system is in Beta (clearly stated on the front page next under each post) and is not some method of suppressing the readers out of callous disregard.
There are real issues in the world, and real injustices taking place each and every day that result in people being tortured, raped, or killed. Someone attempting use a little humor on a website doesn't even register on that scale of reality. My heartfelt advice to you is to stop reading, go outside and get some air, and just take a moment to get some perspective. I think you will be happier for it in the long run.
Really? I think you're full of shit. (Score:1, Interesting)
Really? So when he says "Did we just re-invent cancer?" He's not being an irrational luddite? To automatically assume this is in some way related to cancer speaks directly to his state of mind, and rational it ain't. Nice try though.
Then there's this
"Few people here who tag it are even being serious in the first place"
HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY FUCKING KNOW THAT?
See, where I come from, when someone makes a statement that they can't possibly know to be true, but then pretends that it is, they are a liar. I suspect it's the same where you come from, so you, are in fact, lying.
As someone else said, this has ZERO to do with logic and reason and everything to do with the same stupid, infantile pessimism that people in their late teens and early twenties seem to think sets them apart from the crowd.
Then they grow up and realize they were being idiots. You will too, I hope.
"That's not anti-science or irrational, that's being a realist."
NO IT ISN'T. Again, your opinion is worthless. Being a REALIST is understanding that there will ALWAYS be unintended consequences, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO TO MITIGATE THEM. Attempting to make yourself look smarter than the other guy by coming up with some stupid, inconsequential objection isn't realism by any definition, it's just pathetic.
The tag is stupid, not funny, clever, or even useful. It's just ANOTHER attempt by the crowd here to find something they can glom onto, and be temporarily important by association, like "first post" or "in soviet russia" etc.
I don't need tired memes and second hand humor. I certainly don't need some armchair researcher with no more qualifications than a ficus to spout off about "whatcouldpossiblygowrong". They CAN'T know and the speculation is invariably simplistic to the point of uselessness.
Guess what losers, you're not clever if you appropriate someone else's humor. You're exactly what those of you using this tag are IRL, humorless dorks with no chance of saying or doing anything of import, unless it's regurgitating something someone with some real insight and humor came up with long ago.