Scientists at the Research Institute, which houses the top-rated Kellog School of Technology and Science, created a new organism that have two new genetic letters to the DNA structure: X and Y. The invention was led by Chemist Floyd Romesberg. Because of this creation, they hope this to be the big hope in medicine that present cells with the normal genetic code just cannot make.
With this new “alien” species conflicting from all living organisms on Earth, it supports the concept that it’s possible for life forms beyond our planet to have a totally different genetic code than species on this planet.
How researchers pulled this off was during implantation of newly prepared nucleotides into a bacterium. All life on earth consists of the four necessary genetic letters A, C, G, T. In this case, they used the general bacterium E. Coli, with surprising results. The fresh created organism was able to reproduce and replicate the new X and Y nucleotides along with the normal genetic alphabet.
Despite the success of the “alien” species, lots of philosophical and ethical implications about this breakthrough arose, like the concept of man playing god by creating new life forms.
Jim Thomas of ETC group mailed, “the influx of this unprecedented ‘alien’ life form could in time have far-reaching legal, ethical and regulatory implications.”
Thomas goes on to say that while scientists has built new ways to dabble in the fundamentals of life, the government has not been able to throw together any regulation or assessment in the growing biological fields coming out of these new discoveries.
With new concept in science and technology occurring all the time, we will talk about ideas of playing god and the morals that come along with it. But is that a reason not to innovate, for fear of the unknown?
Dr. Romeberg spells out no reason people could be alarmed. He states they basically feed the artificial nucleotides to the bacteria, and were it to get away or come into contact with a living organism; it would not have access to the synthetic material required to survive and would either die or revert back to the basic DNA structure a regular bacteria is made of.
The use of an extended alphabet in the genetic code has a probability in breakthroughs of new types of proteins not possible before. Such discoveries would be vital to cures once thought impossible. Scientists after the discovery have already made a company they intend to use as a way of testing and developing vaccines, antibiotics and other medicines.
At the time, thus, such thoughts are only ones of hope as many tests still require to be done. It’s still not certain whether such artificial nucleotides are able to even produce proteins.
New medicines are not the only positive that will come out of this; perhaps another piece to the still unsettled puzzle of life on earth and how it came to be would be answered. With some experimentation, it would shed some light as to why four nucleotides is the important number to all living life. Maybe anymore won’t function as well as the present structure, and if that were the case, what a discovery this could still be. At least then we could have some answers to the apparently never ending questions about our existence.
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