Nature: First life with 'alien' DNA

[Olowkow]

Many mansions in a house? Strange word usage. In any case, no matter what happens to be finally true in the scientific world, the Bible will always be deemed by some to have had it covered in retrospect. We just weren't smart enough to have figured it out.

I can't help wondering whether this "alien life" could be the basis of some super dangerous DNA that could become, in principle, some kind of nearly indestructible virus or even a life form. I have been informed by a friend, who seems to know his way around the science of DNA, that this is not even remotely a possibility for the development in question.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Many mansions in a house? Strange word usage.

I think that's "house" in the sense of A plague on both your houses. Not a reference to a house in the modern sense of a smallish, discreet building.

I'm confused by the item linked in the OP. Did the new DNA actually code for proteins, or was it just copied in the E coli?

 

[ddt]

I think that's "house" in the sense of A plague on both your houses. Not a reference to a house in the modern sense of a smallish, discreet building.

I'm confused by the item linked in the OP. Did the new DNA actually code for proteins, or was it just copied in the E coli?

They claimed it did code for protein, and that with the added bases, it encodes for ca. 70 different amino acids instead of the 24 we have now.

 

[CapelDodger]

It'll revive an old, old argument. THere used to be a line of reasoning that went something like: Life is the reason for the Universe. God wouldn't do anything without a reason. Therefore, all the celestial spheres must obviously be occupied. They even went so far as to describe probable lifestyles for inhabitants of other worlds. I don't recall how they addressed the Crucifixion off hand.

Fra Bruno (who proposed this) addressed it by saying ever sphere would have its own sacrificial saviour; the Vatican addressed it by burning Fra Bruno, to nobody's surprise.

 

[Olowkow]

They claimed it did code for protein, and that with the added bases, it encodes for ca. 70 different amino acids instead of the 24 we have now.

Now I'm confused again. I was told, by someone who seems to understand this DNA stuff, that it's as if someone found a way to record data into a new kind of memory, but no one has a way to read it back yet, and that there is no practical use just now for this discovery. This whole subject is something I find very difficult to grasp for some reason. That's why I was hoping to pick some brains on the subject.

 

[Mudcat]

I seem to remember a video game where scientists engineered cells to create drugs. It didn't work out well for anyone involved.

This is by no means a new trope, it has it origins in the first golden age of science fiction back in the good old days of black and white serials that you had to go to a theater to see, usually ending with the tag line like "There are some things man was not meant to know."

In reality it's both an appeal to fear and appeal to ignorance, and I genially don't think we have to fear accidentally creating a zombie plague (Resident Evil) or a Vampire virus (I Am Legend).

 

[Mudcat]

I was told, by someone who seems to understand this DNA stuff, that it's as if someone found a way to record data into a new kind of memory, but no one has a way to read it back yet, and that there is no practical use just now for this discovery.

Sounds like it could be the basis for organic computing.