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

[Plazma Inferno!]

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

 

[Write4U]

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

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.

 

[Dinosaur]

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

 

[Write4U]

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

Wow...now we have 5 genetic carriers. Fractal, RNA, DNA, GRO, and XNA (the same thing?)

The "X" Stands for "Xeno"
Every organism on Earth relies on the same genetic building blocks: the the information carried in DNA. But there is another class of genetic building block called "XNA" — a synthetic polymer that can carry the same information as DNA, but with a different assemblage of molecules.
The "X" in XNA stands for "xeno." Scientists use the xeno prefix to indicate that one of the ingredients typically found in the building blocks that make up RNA and DNA has been replaced by something different from what we find in nature — something "alien," if you will.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5903221/meet-xna-the-first-synthetic-dna-that-evolves-like-the-real-thing

and this somewhat disturbing article;

The investigators subjected an XNA molecule to artificial natural selection in the lab by introducing mutations into its genetic code. By allowing the different versions of the molecule to compete against each other for binding to another molecule, the team ended up with a shape that bound tightly and specifically to the target – just as one would expect of DNA under the same conditions. This makes XNA the only known molecules other than DNA and RNA capable of Darwinian evolution.

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.

 

[Write4U]

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!