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Life, but not as we knew it.

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Life, but not as we know it

Scientists change the genetic code of a bacterium to use an amino acid not usually seen in life, two new, different types of DNA base, and different tRNA.

People have wondered whether the 4 bases in DNA and the 20 amino acids are required or an accident. This points to it being an accident: other possibilities exist and can now be utilized.

And it works!
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Life, but not as we know it

Scientists change the genetic code of a bacterium to use an amino acid not usually seen in life, two new, different types of DNA base, and different tRNA.

People have wondered whether the 4 bases in DNA and the 20 amino acids are required or an accident. This points to it being an accident: other possibilities exist and can now be utilized.

And it works!
Mwah ha ha ha ha! Sounds a little scary to me.

What, in your opinion, are safe guidelines for dealing with high tech information about things like this? Its not easy, but with determination any freud might start making new bacteria in a basement; and that is more dangerous than many other things. Its basically nanotech isn't it? Is it safer to keep the information a secret or to make it public?
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Mwah ha ha ha ha! Sounds a little scary to me.

What, in your opinion, are safe guidelines for dealing with high tech information about things like this? Its not easy, but with determination any freud might start making new bacteria in a basement; and that is more dangerous than many other things. Its basically nanotech isn't it? Is it safer to keep the information a secret or to make it public?

Kind of the way I expect things to go. Whatever safeguards are put in place, I suspect someone is going to overstep them.

Is this safe for human beings as a species? Probably not, but I don't expect the human species to last forever. Some more efficient intelligence or life form is likely to come along and wipe us out if we don't do it ourselves first.
 

beenherebeforeagain

Rogue Animist
Premium Member
Not very long ago (but I'd have to dig around to find what I was reading...), I read that there are currently something like 16 known bases that could be used in RNA and DNA, but that our life uses only five of them. And there are something like 500 amino acids, all of which have mirror-image forms (our life uses those of one of the polarizing directions, but the other looks like it should work as well)...but our form of life here on Earth uses 20 of them.

From a biological standpoint, there doesn't appear to be any reason for those five bases versus the others, nor why those 20 versus all the others...
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
What, in your opinion, are safe guidelines for dealing with high tech information about things like this? Its not easy, but with determination any freud might start making new bacteria in a basement; and that is more dangerous than many other things. Its basically nanotech isn't it? Is it safer to keep the information a secret or to make it public?
For one, it's not that easy to do something catastrophic with these new DNA bases. So there's no new dangers at this point.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Mwah ha ha ha ha! Sounds a little scary to me.

What, in your opinion, are safe guidelines for dealing with high tech information about things like this? Its not easy, but with determination any freud might start making new bacteria in a basement; and that is more dangerous than many other things. Its basically nanotech isn't it? Is it safer to keep the information a secret or to make it public?


Well, at this point, it is a difficult procedure to do anything along this line. To expand to other bases and to other amino acids, we will have to fiddle with the enzymes that connect the amino acids to the tRNA as well as the tRNA to make sure it works with the new bases.

This is a highly difficult thing. Presently.

I suspect aspects of this will become automated over time, with many new bases and amino acids used to perform novel activities. At least right now, the fact that these bases are not available in the natural environment (and the new bacteria don't make them), will keep them from 'going wild'. That said, if survival of these bacteria depends on the these bases or amino acids, they *will* eventually appear and become common due to evolution.

What happens at that point is anyone's guess.

Another aspect: we have just created a completely different life form. It uses a different genetic code and different amino acids. This isn't just a new species. it is a whole new branch of life. And, as it develops and evolves, I suspect we will see some *very* strange results.
 

james bond

Well-Known Member
Life, but not as we know it

Scientists change the genetic code of a bacterium to use an amino acid not usually seen in life, two new, different types of DNA base, and different tRNA.

People have wondered whether the 4 bases in DNA and the 20 amino acids are required or an accident. This points to it being an accident: other possibilities exist and can now be utilized.

And it works!

In my best sarcastic George Michael singing voice... "Time can never cause, careless DNA hypothesis of atheist scientists. Ignorance is kind. There's no comfort in the truth. Pain is all they'll find."

Is this the best atheist scientists can do? One needs 23 amino acids to form a protein. This experiment just shows that people can form a weird amino acid not usually seen in life. Amino acids are all around us and yet no right kinds of amino acids, just an artificial one or weird one, nor a protein. Even in deep space with all its amino acids, no formation of protein. It can only happen within a cell. It's simple. No cell. No protein. God created the system on the first day.

The creation of life isn't really these atheist scientists' goal. Suddenly, we're referring to Scripps "and" an unnamed biotech company. Did you get that? What these people want to do is form new amino acids to exploit for profit. And they usually end up causing havoc. Their expensive new pill will likely cause you to die early or cause biological havoc in the worst case scenario. An amino acid mutation is not good.

The safe way to deal with all this is to READ what real scientists, i.e. what creation scientists have to say.

"A mutation is any spontaneous heritable change in DNA sequence that contributes to genetic variability. It results from 2 possible mechanisms.

  1. Cellular accidents during processes like replication, recombination, or transposition.
  2. Exposures to foreign mutagens, such as chemicals or ultra violet rays.
If even one of the nucleotides in a gene is changed to another, then a new variation of the allele has been added to the population, and a different amino acid may be assembled into the protein during gene expression.

Types
Mutations are classified as harmful, beneficial, or neutral.

  • Harmful - spontaneous changes to genes will render proteins dysfunctional, and can lead to physical deformation, cancer, or death.
  • Beneficial - mutations that produce some benefit can theoretically happen, even though the protein loses all or some of its function.
  • Neutral - mutation where there is no effect (also known as a silent mutation). A neutral mutation either results from a codon that is translated into the same amino acid during gene expression, or a changed amino acid that has no effect on protein function. The following table shows several codons that are each translated into the same amino acid. In each case, the 3rd nucleotide in the codon would be a neutral mutation if changed.
Amino Acid

Serine Leucine Proline Arginine Threonine
Codon
TCT CTT CCT CGT ACT
Codon TCC CTC CCC CGT ACC
Codon TCA CTA CCA CGT ACA
Codon TCG CTG CCG CGT ACG

New information
It is clear that new gene alleles are accumulating in populations today, but there are two possible sources for these changes; mutations, and intentional changes introduced by genetic recombination. The theory of evolution attributes the continued production of genetic diversity to mutations, but evolutionists overlook the fact that the cell was intelligently designed. The cellular machinery was programmed to perform a level of self genetic engineering, and is editing genes systematically so that organisms can adapt to a wide variety of environmental conditions.[1]

Evolutionists contend that mutation, acted upon by natural selection is the mechanism for evolutionary advancement. While this mechanism has the power to change the genome over time, most biological evolution is actually due to genetic recombination followed by natural selection. There are many examples put forward by evolutionary biologists that attempt to show how new genes have been introduced into the genome of an organism. However, in most documented cases it merely illustrates the built-in plasticity or variation within the original created kind. Merely shuffling of already existing genes becomes woefully inadequate if the observational science is followed.

Despite the few examples of beneficial genetic mutations it is unrealistic to assume that this information produced through changing already existing DNA would then be acted on again many more times by other related mutations to build radically different and complex structures than what was there previously. This is to say that mutations are not a reasonable means of producing cascading morphological change from one kind of animal to another but merely speciation.

Obviously mutations can indeed cause dramatic phenotype change from environmental pressures. Many experiments have been performed on fruit flies (Drosophila) where poisons and radiation induced mutations. However, the problem is that they are always deleterious. The Drosophila experiments showed an extra pair of wings on a fly, but these were a hindrance to flying because there are no accompanying muscles. Therefore, these flies would be eliminated by natural selection. Even in the case of mutations which can change the amount of DNA possessed by an organism, an increase in the amount of DNA does not result in increased function. Biophysicist Dr. Lee Spetner in his book, Not by Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution, analyzed examples of mutational changes that evolutionists claimed were increases in information, and demonstrated that they were actually examples of loss of specificity, meaning loss of information.

“ In all the reading I've done in the life-sciences literature, I've never found a mutation that added information. … All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it." - Spetner ”
and

“ We see then that the mutation reduces the specificity of the ribosome protein and that means a loss of genetic information. ... Rather than saying the bacterium gained resistance to the antibiotic, it is more correct to say that is lost sensitivity to it. ... All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it. ”
[2]
Georgia Purdom from AiG, Ph.D. of molecular genetics, has stated,

“ Mutations only alter current genetic information; they have never, ever been observed to add genetic information; they can only change what is there. I have a lot of papers come across my desk of supposedly mutations that have added genetic information, and I've read them all, and I've looked at them all, and never, once have I seen one that has added genetic information; they just don't do that."
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
In my best sarcastic George Michael singing voice... "Time can never cause, careless DNA hypothesis of atheist scientists. Ignorance is kind. There's no comfort in the truth. Pain is all they'll find."

Is this the best atheist scientists can do? One needs 23 amino acids to form a protein. This experiment just shows that people can form a weird amino acid not usually seen in life. Amino acids are all around us and yet no right kinds of amino acids, just an artificial one or weird one, nor a protein. Even in deep space with all its amino acids, no formation of protein. It can only happen within a cell. It's simple. No cell. No protein. God created the system on the first day.

You clearly didn't read the article or, if you did, you didn't understand it.

The amino acid was previously known. The genetic code of the bacterium (not just the particular message, the actual correspondence between bases and amino acids) was changed (to allow 6 bases rather than the usual 4) and one of the codewords was chosen to code for this new amino acid.

And then the amino acid *was* put into a protein by the cell! And the resulting protein functions.

So, yes, we have protein with this new amino acid made by the new genetic code that we designed.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member

james bond

Well-Known Member
You clearly didn't read the article or, if you did, you didn't understand it.

The amino acid was previously known. The genetic code of the bacterium (not just the particular message, the actual correspondence between bases and amino acids) was changed (to allow 6 bases rather than the usual 4) and one of the codewords was chosen to code for this new amino acid.

And then the amino acid *was* put into a protein by the cell! And the resulting protein functions.

So, yes, we have protein with this new amino acid made by the new genetic code that we designed.

I read the article, but you did not read my reply? Again, what they created was an amino acid MUTATION. I already mentioned that they would have had to put it into a cell in order to create the protein. Thus, the goal of finding creation of life which they state is BS. What they're doing is being funded by this "unnamed" biotech company to produce some new product. I would take a SWAG of a pain relief product safer than opioids, the number one prescribed medicine. DJT has waged war against these mutated products. Haven't they been in the news recently?

You and the atheists here will be glad to know I took an Aleve yesterday for bodily aches and pain. Was that safe ha ha? I'll BOLO for side effects ha ha.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
I read the article, but you did not read my reply? Again, what they created was an amino acid MUTATION.
No, it was not. it was a *different* amino acid than those used by that type of cell. It is NOT a mutation.

I already mentioned that they would have had to put it into a cell in order to create the protein. Thus, the goal of finding creation of life which they state is BS.
Nobody said this was the creation of life. It *is* a creation of a different *form* of life with a different genetic code.

What they're doing is being funded by this "unnamed" biotech company to produce some new product. I would take a SWAG of a pain relief product safer than opioids, the number one prescribed medicine. DJT has waged war against these mutated products. Haven't they been in the news recently?

You and the atheists here will be glad to know I took an Aleve yesterday for bodily aches and pain. Was that safe ha ha? I'll BOLO for side effects ha ha.

Yes, they plan to use this technology for medicine. But again you don't seem to grasp what they actually did.

Normal DNA has 4 bases. This new DNA has 6. This is NOT a run-of-the-mill mutation, which just changes one of the 4 bases to a different one. This is adding whole new capabilities: instead of having 4^3=64 possible codewords, we now have 6^3=216 possible genetic codewords.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
I read the article, but you did not read my reply? Again, what they created was an amino acid MUTATION. I already mentioned that they would have had to put it into a cell in order to create the protein. Thus, the goal of finding creation of life which they state is BS. What they're doing is being funded by this "unnamed" biotech company to produce some new product. I would take a SWAG of a pain relief product safer than opioids, the number one prescribed medicine. DJT has waged war against these mutated products. Haven't they been in the news recently?

You and the atheists here will be glad to know I took an Aleve yesterday for bodily aches and pain. Was that safe ha ha? I'll BOLO for side effects ha ha.

No GM for you then?
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
All material items appear to change over time, and genes are material items, therefore evolution happens. Accepting the fact the evolution occurs doesn't eliminate a possible deified causation any more than my accepting it made me into George Clooney.
 

David T

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Life, but not as we know it

Scientists change the genetic code of a bacterium to use an amino acid not usually seen in life, two new, different types of DNA base, and different tRNA.

People have wondered whether the 4 bases in DNA and the 20 amino acids are required or an accident. This points to it being an accident: other possibilities exist and can now be utilized.

And it works!
wsp-roy-sr-507-collision-pic-6-15-11-jpg.jpg


Words are a funny thing.
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
From the abstract of the article in Nature:

A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information

"Since at least the last common ancestor of all life on Earth, genetic information has been stored in a four-letter alphabet that is propagated and retrieved by the formation of two base pairs. The central goal of synthetic biology is to create new life forms and functions1, and the most general route to this goal is the creation of semi-synthetic organisms whose DNA harbours two additional letters that form a third, unnatural base pair. Previous efforts to generate such semi-synthetic organisms2 culminated in the creation of a strain of Escherichia coli that, by virtue of a nucleoside triphosphate transporter from Phaeodactylum tricornutum, imports the requisite unnatural triphosphates from its medium and then uses them to replicate a plasmid containing the unnatural base pair dNaM–dTPT3. Although the semi-synthetic organism stores increased information when compared to natural organisms, retrieval of the information requires in vivo transcription of the unnatural base pair into mRNA and tRNA, aminoacylation of the tRNA with a non-canonical amino acid, and efficient participation of the unnatural base pair in decoding at the ribosome. Here we report the in vivo transcription of DNA containing dNaM and dTPT3 into mRNAs with two different unnatural codons and tRNAs with cognate unnatural anticodons, and their efficient decoding at the ribosome to direct the site-specific incorporation of natural or non-canonical amino acids into superfolder green fluorescent protein. The results demonstrate that interactions other than hydrogen bonding can contribute to every step of information storage and retrieval. The resulting semi-synthetic organism both encodes and retrieves increased information and should serve as a platform for the creation of new life forms and functions."

This is literally the first time in billions of years (and maybe ever) that DNA has used more than 4 base pairs. And the scientists rigged the transcription aparatus to allow for the new bases to form a codon that encodes an amino acid not one of the 20 seen in life *and* it was processed into a protein, showing the whole system works!

At this point, the protein doesn't serve much of a purpose, but if we can get novel amino acids into reactive sites, we might be able to create synthetic species to do anything from make new medicines, to clean up toxic wastes, to providing new enzymes for chemistry.

Truthfully, I find this development to be a fundamental one: much deeper than simply being able to read the genetic code: we can now start to *write* a completely new genetic code. If we keep the same ratio of codons to amino acids (about 3 to 1), this would give us over 70 possible amino acids to play with instead of around 20. Now, that is way in the future still. But....
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
From the abstract of the article in Nature:

A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information

"Since at least the last common ancestor of all life on Earth, genetic information has been stored in a four-letter alphabet that is propagated and retrieved by the formation of two base pairs. The central goal of synthetic biology is to create new life forms and functions1, and the most general route to this goal is the creation of semi-synthetic organisms whose DNA harbours two additional letters that form a third, unnatural base pair. Previous efforts to generate such semi-synthetic organisms2 culminated in the creation of a strain of Escherichia coli that, by virtue of a nucleoside triphosphate transporter from Phaeodactylum tricornutum, imports the requisite unnatural triphosphates from its medium and then uses them to replicate a plasmid containing the unnatural base pair dNaM–dTPT3. Although the semi-synthetic organism stores increased information when compared to natural organisms, retrieval of the information requires in vivo transcription of the unnatural base pair into mRNA and tRNA, aminoacylation of the tRNA with a non-canonical amino acid, and efficient participation of the unnatural base pair in decoding at the ribosome. Here we report the in vivo transcription of DNA containing dNaM and dTPT3 into mRNAs with two different unnatural codons and tRNAs with cognate unnatural anticodons, and their efficient decoding at the ribosome to direct the site-specific incorporation of natural or non-canonical amino acids into superfolder green fluorescent protein. The results demonstrate that interactions other than hydrogen bonding can contribute to every step of information storage and retrieval. The resulting semi-synthetic organism both encodes and retrieves increased information and should serve as a platform for the creation of new life forms and functions."

This is literally the first time in billions of years (and maybe ever) that DNA has used more than 4 base pairs. And the scientists rigged the transcription aparatus to allow for the new bases to form a codon that encodes an amino acid not one of the 20 seen in life *and* it was processed into a protein, showing the whole system works!

At this point, the protein doesn't serve much of a purpose, but if we can get novel amino acids into reactive sites, we might be able to create synthetic species to do anything from make new medicines, to clean up toxic wastes, to providing new enzymes for chemistry.

Truthfully, I find this development to be a fundamental one: much deeper than simply being able to read the genetic code: we can now start to *write* a completely new genetic code. If we keep the same ratio of codons to amino acids (about 3 to 1), this would give us over 70 possible amino acids to play with instead of around 20. Now, that is way in the future still. But....
What an interesting time we live in.
It would be nice to live another thousand years (at least) to see what other changes await us....
Commercials beamed directly into our brains, caffeinated bacon, etc.
 
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