First life with 'alien' DNA - An engineered bacterium

First life with 'alien' DNA
An engineered bacterium is able to copy DNA that contains unnatural genetic letters.

For billions of years, the history of life has been written with just four letters — A, T, C and G, the labels given to the DNA subunits contained in all organisms. That alphabet has just grown longer, researchers announce, with the creation of a living cell that has two 'foreign' DNA building blocks in its genome.

“What we have now is a living cell that literally stores increased genetic information,” says Floyd Romesberg, a chemical biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who led the 15-year effort. Their research appears online today in Nature1.

www.infowars.com...
www.nature.com...
well,now youze done it:
The creation of life
This really looks like the opening of pandora' box

I'd like to see what ATS thinks of this, and where it will lead too?
now what is possible?

What would you create if you had a dna printer?

a reply to: Danbones

Nothing could possibly go wrong with people creating entirely new species of bacterium and viruses...containing designer DNA strands...for which no human would have antibodies...nothing at all.

a reply to: mobiusmale

My sentiments exactly mobiusmale...Not only is technology seeming to follow science fiction,its also trying its best to give us a bio engineered viral apocalypse as well.
Fan bloody tastic!
Aren't we clever!!!

ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES, ZOMBIES!!

What could possibly go wrong? I sense a premise for some new sci-fi/horror scripts. Let's hope it goes no further than that.

a reply to: Danbones

This "playing God" stuff needs to end now! This could invite a stain of virus we have nothing against! We need to just focus on curing whatever we are trying to recreate here, they said it will be a way into cures, etc....This is a baaaaaad move and we need to stop ASAP! Leave God's work to God and him alone....This is just scary for me to read about and think about for future generations...We will be making humans soon enough, this is no bueno.

I can see it now: in the process of toying with alien genetics in an attempt to perfect their intergalactic "stun gun", they create a super contagion that uses every viable species on the planet as a vast network of hosts. How's that for a screenplay?

originally posted by: skunkape23
What could possibly go wrong? I sense a premise for some new sci-fi/horror scripts. Let's hope it goes no further than that.

ATS is my main source for screenplay ideas! This one looks promising. I only hope those nasty bugs don't get loose before I have time to shoot this epic.

This kind of **** really enforces the idea that the world will end not with a bang but a whimper.

lol
what could possibly go wrong
its the computer age:
first you must create the UNDO...
the UNDO
U.N.D.O.
what do yo mean what UNDO...?

I'm not sure if I understand the ... OP.

So, are you saying that scientists discovered a type of bacteria that is "Engineered" but not by man?

I know we've suddenly shifted the topic to bio weapons, but are we talking about ... bacteria engineered by humans or we've found some kind of bacteria that was created out of this world??

While I think messing around with nature is a scary thing but damn, wouldn't it be really cool if we can somehow modify our genetic make up and ... become stronger, faster, live longer than before?

I mean, if you were to tell me one day that Project Rebirth is real, I'd sign up without a moment of hesitation lol...

a reply to: truthseeker84
The science people have essentially tweaked a bacteria to pop some gene sequences in there,and ended up with a weirdy new bacteria which behaves differently.
Nice.
But humans or any animals won't have any resistance to this new weirdy bacteria,so it could be really bad for us if it escaped the lab,through some kind of accident,or earthquake.
Not nice.

a reply to: Danbones

Funnily enough, I predicted the creation of such a bacteria in my last dystopian short story, Escaping God.

In my story, the bad guys create an "alien" bacteria in space and infects the Earth with it so to render Earthlings infertile and, at the same time, test the limits of human genetic modification.

only god can do that!
scientist: well actually.....
stop playing god! this is going to turn out exactly like that movie i saw or story i wrote that interestingly enough leave out any techinical details or involved completely different ones!

i lolled
the cdc does more dangerous research on a daily basis

Just saw this on the news after I got home from work.... I watch CBS

Link

In what is being called a major scientific breakthrough, researchers at the Scripps Research Institute say they created the first microbes containing artificial DNA. It could not only alter the basic genetic code, the fundamental building blocks of life, but also lead to new drugs and treatments.

Nature uses pairs of cytosine, guanine or adenine and thymine. Combinations of these create different variations of every life form.
Scientists created two new bases for the pair Chemical d5SICS and Chemical dNaM
So now there are three pairs to create new variations on.

This is going to open new doors for medicine. Hopefully they can use this to find ways using bacterium that are engineered to produce vaccines and cures. This will turn million dollar vaccines into ten dollar products. Proteins that don't exist in nature, may now be created through cellular reproduction. This is a good thing.

Plus this is one step closer to horses with wings.

originally posted by: Danbones
well,now youze done it:
The creation of life

I wouldn't exactly call it that. What I would call it is heavily modifying the genetics of an existing lifeform. It's not as if they dug into the dirt and built a completely new living thing from scratch.

I can't help but think of the film 'The Stuff.' Which is, by the way, awesome, if you haven't seen it.
www.youtube.com...

The first living organism to carry and pass down to future generations an expanded genetic code has been created by American scientists, paving the way for a host of new life forms whose cells carry synthetic DNA that looks nothing like the normal genetic code of natural organisms.

www.theguardian.com...

what ever they do. it looks like we will be stuck with it
which, with things like monsantos corn
seems to have its frankensteinian moments

originally posted by: mobiusmale
a reply to: Danbones

Nothing could possibly go wrong with people creating entirely new species of bacterium and viruses...containing designer DNA strands...for which no human would have antibodies...nothing at all.

OMG but this is the first thing I thought of when I read the title. What the hell?!!!! They want to kill everyone! And quickly, horribly.

We don't have antibodies to alien germs.

Guys, it is not "alien" in the sense "extraterrestrial", but in the sense "artificial".

This is completely new. Usually all they do is modify what is already present, but what they did here is create 2 more artificial building blocks, and they succeeded in making this hereditary from generation to generation of bacteria, actually creating a life form that cannot be found anywhere else on our planet, because as we know all adn on earth is created with the 4 same building blocks.

I don't know where it will lead, and I am pretty sure those scientists don't know either, apart from the usual "we will cure diseases".

a reply to: gosseyn
yeah, they will cure some diseases all right
LOL
one disease they might cure is called" life as we know it"
I wonder what other diseases they will invent...then cure?