New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
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Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#2Very interesting. I like how about half the article was about reassurance that this won't lead to out of control monsters.
Along with the recent article about pig embryos, I wonder if the not-too-distant future will lead to bizarre custom pets, like something out of the Spore video game.
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#3"create organisms with wholly unnatural attributes and traits not found elsewhere in nature"
I'd argue that this shouldn't add anything categorically new, just like switching from 32 to 64 bit programs doesn't change the world.
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#4> "The other reason we don't need to be freaking out, says Romesberg, is that these molecules have not been designed to work at all in complex organisms, and seeing as they're like nothing found in nature, there's little chance that this could get wildly out of hand."
This is how the plot of every horror/disaster movie starts.
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#5Definitely interesting work, and some very clever solutions to difficult problems, but to be clear, they only had a single unnatural base pair, and it was only in a plasmid.
Addressing the other comments about this leading to some crazy scifi scenario, imagine telling someone you used machine learning to identify spam emails and they started freaking out about how you're going to start Skynet. If you understand how things really work you can see it's not just implausible, it's that things fundamentally don't work that way.
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#6> "The other reason we don't need to be freaking out, says Romesberg, is that these molecules have not been designed to work at all in complex organisms, and seeing as they're like nothing found in nature, there's little chance that this could get wildly out of hand." This is how the plot of every horror/disaster movie starts.
> This is how the plot of every horror/disaster movie starts.
Because its a trope. Can you explain how it gets wildly out of hand beyond speculation?
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#7> "The other reason we don't need to be freaking out, says Romesberg, is that these molecules have not been designed to work at all in complex organisms, and seeing as they're like nothing found in nature, there's little chance that this could get wildly out of hand." This is how the plot of every horror/disaster movie starts.
That's true. I also noticed that whenever I see a helicopter on a screen, the chances of it not crashing or getting shot down are slim.
So in order to protect us from getting whiped out by rogue bacteria from a research lab we MUST ban disaster movies NOW!
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#8Star Trek depicted one of the scarier applications of such a technology: There, The Jem'Hadaar are a genetically engineered race of warriors controlled by the Dominion, who exert power over them by being the sole provider of a substance (Ketracel-White) that they need in order to survive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Star_Trek) http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ketracel-white
If my reading of the paper is correct, the unnatural XY base pair doesn't have any function per se, but without it the organism fails to replicate its DNA and quickly dies. Hence you can argue that after introducing it, the XY base pair has a vital function, as without it the organism can't survive anymore. And since the organism has no way to synthesize X & Y itself, it needs to be supplied from the outside for its whole lifetime. This, in turn, provides a neat way to build "self-terminating" organisms that depend on a steady supplement of the given substance. One could of course argue that vitamins are exactly the same, but contrary to those the artificial base pairs would not be found in the wild, so supply could be controlled more easily.
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#9"create organisms with wholly unnatural attributes and traits not found elsewhere in nature" I'd argue that this shouldn't add anything categorically new, just like switching from 32 to 64 bit programs doesn't change the world.
Maybe not "new" in a systems perspective, but new outcomes thanks to being able to control the system.
Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code
#10> "The other reason we don't need to be freaking out, says Romesberg, is that these molecules have not been designed to work at all in complex organisms, and seeing as they're like nothing found in nature, there's little chance that this could get wildly out of hand." This is how the plot of every horror/disaster movie starts.
> This is how the plot of every horror/disaster movie starts. Because its a trope. Can you explain how it gets wildly out of hand beyond speculation?
Just making a joke