The most challenging goal, says Romesberg, will be to incorporate unnatural base pairs into the genetic code of organisms. "We want to import these into a cell, study RNA trafficking, and in the longest term, expand the genetic code and 'evolvability' of an organism."...
"It requires a long effort by multiple laboratories, but I think ultimately it will lead to some important tools," [Eric Kool] says. "The ability to encode amino acids with unnatural base pairs will be quite powerful when it comes."
Artificial letters added to life's alphabet
13:07 30 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Robert Adler
Two artificial DNA "letters" that are accurately and efficiently replicated by a natural enzyme have been created by US researchers. Adding the two artificial building blocks to the four that naturally comprise DNA could allow wildly different kinds of genetic engineering, they say.
Eventually, the researchers say, they may be able to add them into the genetic code of living organisms.
The diversity of life on earth evolved using genetic code made from arrangements of four genetic "bases", sometimes described as letters. They are divided into two pairs, which bond together from opposite strands of a DNA molecule to form the rungs of its characteristic double-helix shape.
The unnatural but functional new base pair is the fruit of nearly a decade of research by chemical biologist Floyd Romesberg, at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, US.
Romesberg and colleagues painstakingly created a library of nearly 200 potential new genetic bases that are slight variations on the natural ones. Unfortunately, none of them were similar enough in structure and chemistry to the real thing to be copied accurately by the polymerase enzymes that replicate DNA inside cells.
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