Post by faskew on Feb 22, 2019 9:57:43 GMT -5
Interesting article in Wired News. Scientists have developed DNA using 8 chemicals. So not only can we create and alter life using old DNA, the door is open for totally unknown possibilities.
For those who slept through 6th-grade science, ALL life on earth uses the same 4 chemicals to make DNA - cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine. DNA makes RNA and RNA makes proteins and proteins make everything else that lives. Each living cell has several billion base pairs of these chemicals (3 billion in humans). The only difference between a bacterium and a human is how many DNA base pairs we have and how they’re organized. Chimps have something like 96% of the same DNA that humans do.
So now these folk have created DNA with 4 new chemicals added to the original 4. No one knows yet what this means, but experiments provide hope that there may be some disease cures and other benefits. DNA is also information-dense, and potentially makes a better storage medium that silicon, so someday we may see quantum computers based on DNA. Early days yet, so who knows.
Amazing stuff. BTW, the new DNA is called “hachimoji” – Japanese for “eight letters”.
www.wired.com/story/doubling-our-dna-building-blocks-could-lead-to-new-life-forms/
For those who slept through 6th-grade science, ALL life on earth uses the same 4 chemicals to make DNA - cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine. DNA makes RNA and RNA makes proteins and proteins make everything else that lives. Each living cell has several billion base pairs of these chemicals (3 billion in humans). The only difference between a bacterium and a human is how many DNA base pairs we have and how they’re organized. Chimps have something like 96% of the same DNA that humans do.
So now these folk have created DNA with 4 new chemicals added to the original 4. No one knows yet what this means, but experiments provide hope that there may be some disease cures and other benefits. DNA is also information-dense, and potentially makes a better storage medium that silicon, so someday we may see quantum computers based on DNA. Early days yet, so who knows.
Amazing stuff. BTW, the new DNA is called “hachimoji” – Japanese for “eight letters”.
www.wired.com/story/doubling-our-dna-building-blocks-could-lead-to-new-life-forms/
