Expanding the alphabet of life with artificial DNA

Researchers in California have created an organism that will reproduce using artificial DNA that does not exist in nature. It has the potential to create new medicine, but the idea of engineering the very fabric of life also raises concerns.

One of the first things you learn in biology is that for all its diversity, life on earth is based on a very simple genetic code...

Everything that has ever walked, crawled, soared, swum, or oozed its way across this planet, is made of DNA containing four letters which form the basic chemical building blocks of life -- A, T, C, and G.

Except that now, there are two more building blocks.

Earlier this month, chemists at the Scripps Research Institute in California demonstrated they could create organisms with two new chemical building blocks which do not occur in nature. They call them X and Y.

More importantly, they showed they could get those organisms to reproduce, faithfully passing on that artificial DNA from one generation to the next. In the process, they helped show that life on earth does not necessarily have to be what it has always been. And, that the field of synthetic biology is growing even faster, and more furiously, than it might have seemed.

Despite the promise of new drugs and medical treatments, the idea of engineering the very fabric of life does raise concerns...

• Floyd Romesberg is a chemist and synthetic biologist with the Scripps Research Institute.
• Jim Thomas is the Program Director with the ETC Group, an international organization that tracks emerging technologies.

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Today we discussed what artificial DNA may make possible. But as any sci-fi fan could tell you, messing around with the building blocks of life can be risky.

It's a lesson that was dramatized on Star Trek: The Next Generation when a medical treatment turns the Enterprise crew into hairy pre-historic monsters....

Are you excited about the potential applications of artificial DNA? Or do you have concerns about where the science could lead us?

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This segment was produced by The Current's Gord Westmacott.