Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla have created the first organism that uses synthetic bases in its DNA.
Life has four natural bases — adenine and thymine, cytosine and guanine — that make up opposite sides of the DNA ladder. The DNA of the “semisynthetic” bacterium created by Professor Floyd Romesberg and his colleagues also has two synthetic bases. Most importantly, it keeps these two bases as it reproduces.
Their research was posted online last week ahead of print publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Romesberg’s term had earlier modified the common E. coli bacteria to accept the new bases, but it dropped them over time. The latest work made the change permanent.
“If the semisynthetic organism is going to really be an organism, it has to be able to stably maintain that information,” said Romesberg. “We can now get the light of life to stay on. That suggests that all of life’s processes can be subject to manipulation.”
While applications for this kind of organism are still far in the future, the researchers say the work could be used to create new functions for single-celled organisms that play important roles in drug discovery and more.
