Scientists Created First Semi-Synthetic Organism that Stored and Retrieved Unnatural Information
On Nov. 29, 2017, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) announced they had designed a bacterium with two unnatural bases, called X and Y, which could someday help them produce new molecules for medical therapies.
The study, published in the journal Nature, announced that their “semi-synthetic” strain of E. coli is the first to both contain the unnatural bases in its DNA and use the bases to instruct cells to make a new protein.
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Source: Scripps Research Institute
Credit: Image: Microscopy of ecoli bacteria, courtesy National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
