WASHINGTON, May 11 (RIA Novosti) - The Scripps Institute’s breakthrough experiment to insert new “alien” elements into the DNA sequence and still have a living organism that can pass on its genetic material is a major accomplishment in our efforts to “inch towards” a synthetic biology, says Steven Benner, a researcher in the field at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida.
“This result is a step towards future development of living cells that use synthetic ‘alien’ DNA that encodes additional genetic information to support biotechnology,” Benner told RIA Novosti Friday.
“This shows that something that was widely believed to not be possible, actually is possible,” Benner said. “Specifically, people have generally thought that the machines inside of living cells responsible for copying DNA would reject unnatural DNA. This work shows that they need not.”
The achievement which has long eluded scientists took over 14 years to create. The end result was an unnatural pair for replication in DNA. For the first time, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, have managed to expand the 4-letter DNA alphabet to produce an “alien” cell that had two more building blocks.
“For 30 years, the field of synthetic biology has climbed a ‘wall of doubt,’ as most molecular biologists and biotechnologists have doubted that any of this would work, and especially the replication of DNA containing unnatural building blocks inside of a living cell,” Benner explained.
Although there is neither immediate importance for the mankind or commercial potential, should the work develop and further progress be made, there can potentially be a lot in the future, Benner added.
Benner emphasized that biologically engineered systems have the advantage of being able to do things on a very small scale.
“Engineered strains should, for example, allow miniaturized biological ‘robots’ to enter the human body and manage disease, remove blood clots, and assist in the repair of tissue damage,” he explained.
Professor Brian Ingalls of University of Waterloo believes this achievement could provide insights into the evolution of DNA as the hereditary material of life.
“It could potentially provide an improved framework for production of proteins composed of unnatural amino acids,” Ingalls told RIA Novosti Friday. “It could also be used to build regulatory mechanisms that would not interact with a cell’s natural genetic machinery; this could allow for biotech applications with improved function and safety.”
