Let There Be Life: Researchers Created Brand New Kind of Working DNA

Posted: May 15, 2014 at 12:43 am

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) -- helical polymers of nucleic acids attached to a phosphate backbone -- is the blueprint of all life on Earth. From humans to even some lowly parasitic viruses (essentially bundles of DNA looking for a host), DNA is used daily to encode ribonucleic acid (RNA), which in turn are used to make the proteins that regulate life as we know it. I. It's Life Jim, But Not as We Know It In 1953, Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling photographed double-helical DNA, offering a final conclusive proof of life's genetic code. James Watson and Francis Crick, a pair of famous biologists, popularized the finding. Life as we know it is produce by combinations of two kinds of base-pairs:

An unnatural base pair is seen here aside a natural base pair (dC-dG). [Image Source: Nature]

These organisms cannot survive outside the laboratory. Personally, I think its a less dangerous way to modify DNA.

Source: Nature [journal paper]

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Let There Be Life: Researchers Created Brand New Kind of Working DNA

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