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New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

sciencealert.com

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Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#41

Post by dnautics »

_throwaway1843 wrote: post #8

Star 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…

I think the goal is to give it a function. But in order to have it replicate in a cell, you need to have a way of selecting for it. Biosafety through selection is an easy "add-on" because you already had it by virtue of the fact that you needed it to get the real result.

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#42

Post by dnautics »

oever wrote: post #38
ambrop7 wrote: post #26

Can the organism replicate the XY pairs during DNA replication (and pass it on to divided cells)? I haven't seen that mentioned, only that it "holds onto it for its entire lifespan" which is not clear to me. There's also nothing about the interaction of these pairs with existing mechanisms, like transcription (DNA-->RNA) and translation (RNA-->protein). Could the new new pair increase the space of aminoacids from whi…

The XY pairs are not replicated. To replicate them would require the presence of a slew of specialized proteins that can deal with XY pairs. The achievement is that the E. Coli lifetime is not affected. The XY's are probably inserted in a part of the DNA that is not transcribed.

I 150% guarantee you they are in a place that is transcribed. Otherwise there would be no selection pressure to maintain it and the bacteria would kick it out in favor of one of the plain old bases.

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#44

Post by amelius »

madebysquares wrote: post #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.

It seems we're one step closer to explaining the Fermi Paradox, [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#45

Post by jcoffland »

_yosefk wrote: post #40
_throwaway1843 wrote: post #8

Star 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…

It's good as long self-termination is a nice-to-have feature. If you REALLY want them to self-terminate but you found out that they mutated and can now synthesize X & Y, you're in trouble. Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary, but genetically modified organisms that replicate autonomously are more than a bit scary. As programmers - a profession that managed to spread Shellshock, the dumbest imaginable backd…

> We have no idea what happens in our own code

That's an overstatement. Sure code can be very complex but we actually can see exactly what's going on whenever we really want to. It's just that we cannot see what's going on with all the code all the time.

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#46

Post by jcoffland »

Joeri wrote: post #15
88e282102ae2e5b wrote: post #5

Definitely 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 t…

Then again, nobody knows how skynet will get started. If it does happen, you can be sure it'll be done by someone who is sure that things just don't work that way, right up to the moment they are crushed by a giant metal boot.

Let's hope that Skynet is not able to feed off of spam. There's so much of it's food already. We'd never be able to stop it.

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#47

Post by jcoffland »

rmah wrote: post #35
singularity2001 wrote: post #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.

This is less like 32bit to 64bit and more like moving from binary to trinary logic.

Even more like a move from 4bit to 6bit logic.

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#48

Post by mikeash »

rmah wrote: post #35
singularity2001 wrote: post #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.

This is less like 32bit to 64bit and more like moving from binary to trinary logic.

Which also wouldn't do anything remarkable.

Re: New organisms have been formed using the first ever 6-letter genetic code

#50

Post by portent »

jcoffland wrote: post #45
_yosefk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good as long self-termination is a nice-to-have feature. If you REALLY want them to self-terminate but you found out that they mutated and can now synthesize X & Y, you're in trouble. Genetically modified organisms are a bit scary, but genetically modified organisms that replicate autonomously are more than a bit scary. As programmers - a profession that managed to spread Shellshock, the dumbest imaginable backd…

> We have no idea what happens in our own code That's an overstatement. Sure code can be very complex but we actually can see exactly what's going on whenever we really want to. It's just that we cannot see what's going on with all the code all the time.

code can be very simple, and we don't always know what it will do.

Simple example: can you tell me if this snippet of (python) code will ever terminate or not?

x=0.5

while x0.7:

  x=3.59*x*(1-x)

  print x
... and what if the 3.59 was replaced by a different number - maybe 3.60 ? or 3.84 ?
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