Biologists Create Cells With 6 DNA Letters, Instead Of Just 4

Biologists Create Cells With 6 DNA Letters, Instead of Just 4

Scientists have created cells with an expanded genetic alphabet that includes two more letters.

“We now have a cell that survives and lives with more information in its genome,” said Floyd Romesberg, the synthetic biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California who led the work.

Romesberg and colleagues managed to coax E. coli bacteria into taking up their six-letter DNA and making copies of it. The cells’ enzymes copied the two new letters, which the scientists call X and Y for short, along with the usual four. The cells grew a little more slowly than normal, but otherwise seemed no worse for wear, the team reports today in Nature.

Cells with an expanded genetic alphabet could potentially make a wider range of proteins. Image: Synthorx

We sometimes think we want to disappear, but all we really want is to be found.

(via matabangutak)

    JVM,                    Overtime I just learned that I can never unlove you.                    I can only either love you more or love you less.                                                                                                      -N.

After months of contemplating with what I really feel for you and thinking of the possible future that we could have, after the numerous rejections and nights of wondering how things would have been if our paths merged at that juncture, after all those times of lying and denying everything to myself—after all of that, I’m still into you.