Six-Letter DNA Alphabet Produces Proteins in Cells (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Six-Letter DNA Alphabet Produces Proteins in Cells (2017)

the-scientist.com

49 points_Microft22 comments

Y. Zhang et al., “A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information,” Nature, doi:10.1038/nature24659, 2017.

Oooh your paragraph of text is sooooo compelling that I do want to “join your site” and agree to your cookie policy!! Omg how did I live without such insight. Take my money please!!

Terrifying. And awesome.

Why the 4 amino acids? Why not 5?

I think you mean nucleotide. Good reddit thread about potential reasons why there are 4 and not 6.

https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/d99qr/why_are_ther...

> Terrifying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

well lack of resources and procrastinations seem to be the reason we still haven’t colonized other planet. Not sure it’s that scary :-)

But can it reproduce?

These types of Genetically Recoded Organisms can reproduce, but they are required to be grown on a special media containing the extra nucleic acids or the amino acids. This is actually a neat type of way to prevent modified organisms from escaping the research environment and growing in the wild.

In a movie, it would mutate, escape, then somebody would claim "life finds a way".

Horizontal gene transfer makes mutation unnecessary, and for single cell organisms, natural selection in action.

Until they evolve enzymes to convert regular amino acids into the extra ones.

Do you think they can even survive for long enough outside the special media for that to happen?

The most common method of escape that I read about is a genetic mutation that swaps out the recoded substitution for an amino acid that happens the keep the protein viable.

This is preventable if you simply use multiple substitutions in multiple places. That makes the probability of viable escape next to nothing if done well.

Thanks for the clarification. That's what I meant, and it counts as reproducing in my book.

2017

we already knew there are many small variations of nucleotides and even amino acids

Behind a paywall

If you are using Firefox then try its reader mode. It works just fine.

Seems available via free registration, as well.

Or view source. The entire article is in the json right at the top.

You can't just hack into a website like that, that's illegal!

This site just feels scammy. I hate paywalls.

Its free registration, not a paywall.

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