Category: Uncategorized

HORTA THINKING. "The Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise crew finds Horta, a silicon-based alien life form that can't be detected with tricorders because it wasn't carbon-based." The answer you get depends on the questions you ask. https://lnkd.in/dGbsBxV View in LinkedIn

"SYDNEY BRENNER has expanded the genetic alphabet by adding two new nucleobases, Z and P, potentially making a wider array of genes and proteins." A whole new frontier. https://lnkd.in/dYQeS-P View in LinkedIn

HUGE STEP. "Holliger and his team engineered enzymes that helped six types of XNA to assemble and replicate genetic messages. The enzymes transcribed DNA into the various XNAs, then back into new DNA strands — with 95% accuracy or more. For the first time, this confirms that replication, heredity and evolution are possible in these alternative backbones." (XDNA = xeno-nucleic acids). https://lnkd.in/d7dNEeN View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC SPECIES. "Unlike the first synthetic cells made in 2010, in which Venter’s team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, copied an existing bacterial genome and transplanted it into another cell, the genome of the minimal cells is like nothing in nature. Venter says that the cell, which is described in a paper released on 24 March in Science, constitutes a brand new, artificial species." http://www.nature.com/news/minimal-cell-raises-stakes-in-race-to-harness-synthetic-life-1.19633 View in LinkedIn

ARTIFICIAL POLYMERS EVOLVE. "We also select XNA aptamers, which bind their targets with high affinity and specificity, demonstrating that beyond heredity, specific XNAs have the capacity for Darwinian evolution and folding into defined structures. Thus, heredity and evolution, two hallmarks of life, are not limited to DNA and RNA but are likely to be emergent properties of polymers capable of information storage." (XDNA = xeno-nucleic acids). https://lnkd.in/dbgtZme View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC LIFE RACE. "‘Minimal’ cell raises stakes in race to harness synthetic life. Genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter has created a synthetic cell that contains the smallest genome of any known, independent organism. Functioning with 473 genes, the cell is a milestone in his team’s 20-year quest to reduce life to its bare essentials and, by extension, to design life from scratch." http://www.nature.com/news/minimal-cell-raises-stakes-in-race-to-harness-synthetic-life-1.19633 View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION STORAGE IN ARTIFICIAL DNA. "With the use of polymerase evolution and design, we show that genetic information can be stored in and recovered from six alternative genetic polymers based on simple nucleic acid architectures not found in nature [xeno-nucleic acids (XNAs)]." https://lnkd.in/dbgtZme View in LinkedIn

MINIMAL GENOME. "Venter and his colleagues also synthesized a trimmed down, artificial version of Mycoplasma's DNA, a project known as the Minimal Genome Project. Attempts to implant the synthetic DNA all failed, until now." https://lnkd.in/e9ZJKP5 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first weekend case study about knowledge from other cultures that has been very slow to diffuse: in this case, the beneficial effects of physical stimulation in plants. This Japanese case mirrors that of the uses of bacteriophages as antibiotics in Russia: in both cases, the original reports lay obscure for decades in publications written in Japanese and Russian respectively. And when eventually discovered, were treated with overt skepticism or hostility by western scientists. View in LinkedIn

GENOME TRANSPLANTATION. "In 2007 Venter transplanted the genome of one Mycoplasma bacterium into another." https://lnkd.in/e9ZJKP5 View in LinkedIn