XNA is synthetic DNA that’s stronger than the real thing

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by TheProphetMark

There could be a number of things that come from this, off the top of my head, I'd like to wonder what type of an effect a XNA based bacteria/organism might have if it were introduced to a DNA based life form. Very interesting.


Might i suggest you watch the movie...The Thing.

reply to post by pianopraze

Every organism on Earth relies on the same genetic building blocks: the the information carried in DNA. But there is another class of genetic building block called "XNA" — a synthetic polymer that can carry the same information as DNA, but with a different assemblage of molecules.

XNA is synthetic DNA that’s stronger than the real thing

On the second line are atomic numbers of the basic elements which humans thought (in 1974) made up the foundations of Life -- hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus.
-
So, what about those changes? To begin with, the first line -- the decimal equivalents of the binary code -- were unchanged. But the atomic numbers of the elements composing the basis of Life had been altered: silicon, an element with an atomic number of 14, was added precisely in the correct sequence -- between oxygen (atomic number 8) and phosphorus (atomic number 15). This was a most curious and significant addition.

The Chilbolton Crop Glyphs

Silicones are polymers that include silicon together with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sometimes other chemical elements. Some common forms include silicone oil, silicone grease, silicone rubber, and silicone resin.

Silicone

Don't ask me how this is all related, I'm no scientist.
Seriously though, this all seems connected in some way if you ask me.

reply to post by pianopraze


Bologna. Aliens is the main key here. ALIENS.

Originally posted by TheProphetMark
This is just wrong. Scientist trying to play God.

Yeah,

Just ask Tupac.

Originally posted by ventian
This is very much worth investigating IMO. This could give us new insight into how we got here; furthermore, it can provide insight to what is possible on other planets.

I agree that this is very worthy of further research, but not until our society has matured some. At this point I can't see that it would ultimately be used for anything positive. If the military thought modern genetics were neat, I am sure the rather terrible ideas never stop flowing when even basic rules of life can be bent and re-defined.

Lets see this tech come back around so another look in a few decades...if we're still advancing and not just recovering. Maybe by then it'll help and not be weaponized.

Time after time new discoveries, breakthroughs in science, invention and innovation come to light.

Time after time people wave their arms about and regurgitate programming like "they're playing god", "if man was meant to fly he'd have wings".

I wonder how many that have spouted such have typed out those responses on the latest 4G smart phone.
Look at the technology you're using to reply with these Luddite parroted phrases.
If man was meant to communicate over vast distances near instantaneously, he'd be like gawd. OMG being on the internets is playing gawd?

Of course, saying that something is akin to 'playing god' only counts when it's convenient for whatever bias against whatever technology you want to bash is convenient.

It's not playing god. Man invented god. It's being human. We have the tools (created, or evolved, regardless your argument) between our ears to do these things, to observe the universe and everything in it from the very small to the very large, and change them to suit any purpose we might imagine for them.

If you're a creationist, then, gawd gave this ability to us fair and square. He/She/It/They wouldn't have given us this ability or even the thing or avenue to pursue if it wasn't meant to be poked at, examined, and possibly even changed, customized, or improved on.

If gawd wanted that tree turned into a dining room table or a door for your house, then that tree would have growed that way. Chopping a tree down and turning into something else is playing gawd.

Please tell me you get the gist of that, and no, it's not any different. Tree, banana, fish, DNA, it doesn't matter.

Corn is entirely unnatural and is the result of thousands of years of human selection for bigger meatier kernels. Corn looked more like wheat before man started growing it and selecting the bigger returns, and seeding the bigger returns over and over and over across thousands of years.
Does that make corn the devil?

reply to post by Druscilla


There is a fundamental difference between breeding strains of corn and GMO...

There is a fundamental difference between breeding new types of dogs and creating new animals...

Some risks are worth taking... some are not.

And what is more troubling than the technology, honestly, is those who control it. Those who control it have a history of using such things for killing, control, and domination... not building up humanity and bettering our world.

Those are just buzzwords they pretend to believe while they destroy.

I am not a real doom and gloom person, i offset my op warning with humor for a reason. We stand on a precipice in our history as a species. We seriously have the ability to wipe ourselves out, and if you watch the news the insane are in control right now... and they are being evil, greedy, sobs without any care for humanity.

reply to post by pianopraze


Evil greedy sobs are nothing new. History is full of evil greedy sobs. It's practically one of the requirements to be a government leader to be an evil greedy sob.
Some are just better at swaying public opinion in their favor, gaining the popularity of the masses, and hiding the more evil greedy and selfish things they get up to.

Somehow, regardless and despite all this evil greedy selfishness, even though we have nuclear bombs, biological weapons, and the world is still wanting for a cure to hunger and poverty, we somehow have things like computers, and smart phones, and civilization with a worldwide interconnectivity as never seen before, and ever increasing levels of longevity and wellness.

Your phone, probably even just the dumb computer in your car has 1000x more processing power than the entirety of the lunar landing program.
That's amazing, and it's publicly available for any Joe or Jane on the street.

reply to post by Druscilla


Yes my phone has 100 times more power... yay...

Meanwhile how many people have these greedy bastards killed today so they can make more money and drown our country in mind numbing media so we don't realize how screwed up we are?

So i'm sooooo happy about my phone........

Technology has nothing to do with morality, no.

But morality needs to be applied to technology... and right now it's not.

reply to post by pianopraze


I agree that morality does indeed need be applied to technology.
The argument then goes to philosophy where we get "who's morality" based on what.

Still, yes, morality is indeed a concern.

On the medical side of technology, we have artificial skin, stem cell research to grow cloned veins, skin, heart valves, brain tissue, and many other things tailored to the patient.
There's work on artificial blood and many other wonderful things.
Just recently there was a thread here on ATS describing Fullerine C60 as doubling the lifespan of lab rats given a mixture of olive oil and C60. The implications if they pass over to humans means a much longer life.
That's all future tech though. We use pig veins and other parts from pigs tailored for medical use and have been doing so for quite awhile. Sure, to many it's 'unnatural' to be using some other animal parts inside a human, but, it works, and it works well enough until we find another better solution.
We immunize against viruses by using viruses, and bacterial, and other such.
There are cures and treatments for a dizzying variety of ails that weren't around just 10 years ago.

Sure, there's lots of scary implications for many advances, and yes, we should be careful not to abuse these wonders, or use them for evil gains, or war.
Technology can indeed destroy us, but, technology can very well save us too.

I don't see anything wrong with this research, and why do people even bring god into the equation? If we are able to do this then I'm sure god doesn't mind =]

We're this close to making life and yet people still think the idea of us being made just to mine gold for some extraterrestrials thousands of years ago is crazy.

Think of us 100 years from now. (If we make it that far) We make life capable of doing something that we no longer want to do; mining for instance. Once their done mining, we collect the resources. After that, we tell them to do something more complex, and they can't do it. So then we make them more complex, they do their job, we collect the resources again, and leave the planet. (Assuming we have the technology to do so) Little did we know (or did we?) that we made them more complex than we thought, and so they started to evolve. Every now and again we check up on them.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
If the military thought modern genetics were neat, I am sure the rather terrible ideas never stop flowing when even basic rules of life can be bent and re-defined.

That reminded me, DARPA being the scientific arm of the Military is already into this AI
XNA RNA DNA quest. Its called and its Living Foundries

DARPA's Living Foundries - create rapid, reliable manufacturing capability where multiple cellular functions can be fabricated, mixed and matched on demand and the whole system controlled by integrated circuitry.

Synthetic biology is already a burgeoning....created the world’s first synthetic cell, with a chromosome produced by a machine, and we’ve seen a host of other bio-engineering breakthroughs like cells that communicate like electronic circuits, artificial proteins that can sustain life. www.popsci.com...

I get worried that someday we will create the next step up on the food chain, and we become the chickens.

Originally posted by Druscilla
Time after time new discoveries, breakthroughs in science, invention and innovation come to light.

Time after time people wave their arms about and regurgitate programming like "they're playing god", "if man was meant to fly he'd have wings".

I wonder how many that have spouted such have typed out those responses on the latest 4G smart phone.
Look at the technology you're using to reply with these Luddite parroted phrases.
If man was meant to communicate over vast distances near instantaneously, he'd be like gawd. OMG being on the internets is playing gawd?

Of course, saying that something is akin to 'playing god' only counts when it's convenient for whatever bias against whatever technology you want to bash is convenient.

It's not playing god. Man invented god. It's being human. We have the tools (created, or evolved, regardless your argument) between our ears to do these things, to observe the universe and everything in it from the very small to the very large, and change them to suit any purpose we might imagine for them.

If you're a creationist, then, gawd gave this ability to us fair and square. He/She/It/They wouldn't have given us this ability or even the thing or avenue to pursue if it wasn't meant to be poked at, examined, and possibly even changed, customized, or improved on.

If gawd wanted that tree turned into a dining room table or a door for your house, then that tree would have growed that way. Chopping a tree down and turning into something else is playing gawd.

Please tell me you get the gist of that, and no, it's not any different. Tree, banana, fish, DNA, it doesn't matter.

Corn is entirely unnatural and is the result of thousands of years of human selection for bigger meatier kernels. Corn looked more like wheat before man started growing it and selecting the bigger returns, and seeding the bigger returns over and over and over across thousands of years.
Does that make corn the devil?

edit on 20-4-2012 by Druscilla because: (no reason given)

yea isn't that annoying when ever new internet tech always brings out the whining luddites...

reply to post by Druscilla


Thank you for your refreshing posts in this sea of ignorance, doom and gloom. One thing science may never achieve is getting rid of progress-rejecting neanderthals and their witch doctors.

Originally posted by amongus
This proves to me that we were intelligently designed. If we can do this now, think what other civilizations are capable of with a million year lead?

You are on the right page....
Stars!

This news is enormous. Really.

I almost made a thread destined for the trash heap... I'm glad I found yours...

Move over DNA

The finding is a proof of principle that life needn't be based on DNA and RNA. Astrobiologists have long suspected as much.

"This is very interesting with respect to the origin of life," says Jack Szostak of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. Nowadays, all life-forms use either DNA or RNA to store genetic information. Many biologists suspect that the first life-forms used RNA, and DNA was adopted later. But we don't know why those two molecules were chosen: are they the best possible storage media, or were they simply the only things available?

Holliger suspects RNA was an opportunistic choice. "Clearly, there is no overwhelming functional imperative to use DNA and RNA," he says. Instead, life may have started with RNA simply because it was made in large quantities on the early Earth.

Most biologists think life on Earth began with RNA because it can both store information and catalyse useful reactions. In his latest experiment, Holliger has now shown that one of his XNA's – 1,5-anhydrohexitol nucleic acid, or HNA – can fold into a 3D shape and bind to specific target molecules. This is the first step in becoming an enzyme. The same thing had previously been done for threose nucleic acid (TNA).

This suggests XNAs might form the basis of life on other planets, where different environments led to different chemistry. "I would be surprised if we find truly extraterrestrial life that was based on DNA and RNA," Holliger says. "There might have been an XNA-world on a different planet."

reply to post by Druscilla

Time after time new discoveries, breakthroughs in science, invention and innovation come to light. Time after time people wave their arms about and regurgitate programming like "they're playing god", "if man was meant to fly he'd have wings".

On enough threads and chats over the years to appreciate the situation I find myself in here, I've been the one dumping on 'techno-phobes'. In this case? Well.... Time after Time would not seem to apply here, would it? This isn't a phone or a medical procedure to cure an illness or even some very high tech piece of equipment. This truly is working at the most base levels of the creation of life itself. How can that not stand in a category all it's own and totally removed from all other areas of progress?

People designing a cell phone or coding the chips can't create a monster fit for anyone's worst nightmare...and perhaps a thinking and willfull one at that...with a single instance of bad judgement or a single program where consequence of action wasn't properly considered.

In the area of Bio-Technology where the creation of life that never previously existed on this planet...even in micro scale within a lab...is concerned, I think we need to move very carefully, slowly and with absolutely *NO* "Classified: Secret" stamps anywhere in sight. People working these fields don't get to have those stamps. Ever.

Cant wait until I find a chicken with the head of a seal wandering on the road because of this dangfangled new technology