Synthetic DNA? What’s Next, Synthetic Life?

By James Donahue

If you have had an interest in science and especially the news of biological discoveries in the past decade or two, you must have stood in awe at the fact that researchers succeeded in mapping the genetic makeup of the human body.

Researchers for the Human Genome Project, as it was called, spent about 12 years determining the sequence of chemical base pairs that make up our DNA, and then identifying and mapping an estimated 25,000 genes that make up the human genome. Since the project was completed in 2003 the research has been centered on discovering ways to tinker with the DNA to find cures for inherited genetic impurities and illnesses that are passed down from parents to their children.

While all of the above was going on, Stanley Miller, a graduate student in biochemistry, was wondering if the mixture of chemicals available in the atmosphere at the time the Earth was being formed could generate life. As an experiment, he built an apparatus comprised of flasks, condensers, heat and electrical charges and then added water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen to see what happened.

Miller boiled the mixture of gasses and continued to pass them through the device that was designed to keep everything circulating. After a week of this, he used paper chromatography and discovered that the flask contained several amino acids and other organic molecules…everything needed to produce life.

Miller’s experiment and the work of researchers at the Human Genome Project have since opened the door to an even more amazing discovery . . . the creation of synthetic molecules that function and even evolve just like natural DNA.

One report said the research teams believe these synthetic “building blocks,” dubbed XNA, have been found to be capable of binding to both DNA and RNA The latter is part of a chain of molecules involved in encoding genetic information. A research team led by Vitor Pinheiro of the UK’s Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, found that the evolved enzymes that can make XNA from DNA and then can change XNA back into DNA. The enzymes can store and copy data and duplicate everything that DNA does to replicate life.