Thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks.
Posted on 02/27/2019 5:29:17 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
We have a committee at my University that is in charge of reviewing this type of research. This $hit scares the poo out of me, for good reason.
Synthetic can mean unnatural, or merely unnaturally produced.
Commercial M-S-M is synthesized by a patented process, but it is chemically identical to naturally-derived M-S-M.
I’m hoping this doesn’t lead to monsters. It sounds like this could lead to monsters. I’m not a big fan of monsters.
1/2 man, 1/2 bear, and 1/2 pig. Manbearpig.
Re: “Why do you need synthetic base pairs?”
Because all the natural base pairs eventually try to kill you!
Many proteins are helped along by chaperone proteins that help them to fold properly. The chaperones are usually of the heat shock protein (hsp) class.
Misfolding of proteins happens frequently. Those proteins are recognized early on by other proteins that target the misfolded proteins for destruction. Prions are misfolded proteins that elude the destruction process. As a result, they build up slowly and eventually cause problems.
Current belief is that a prion is a misfolded protein like structure which causes disease...but a misfolded protein is not necessarily a prion.
Um, don’t you mean five letters, G, A, T, C, and U?
The interactions of proteins with nucleic acids are varied and complex. If the alternate bases were bound to phosphorylated ribose or dideoxyribose, no doubt some of the proteins would interact without a problem. But I think there would have to be a huge effort to make a system where these new bases could be used to code for proteins or functional RNAs. To make functional novel biomolecules is not currently possible, I think, since we still have such a long way to go to tie structure to function to the point that we could design new functional molecules de novo.
I do see some potential here, for example to create functional bacteria that can only grow using the artificial bases, which do not have the ability to synthesize those bases. They could be used to produce drugs or break down toxins, with far less concern that they could escape into the environment.
One wonders if these guys can even keep a straight face.
“...there is nothing particularly ‘magic’ or special about those four chemicals that evolved on Earth...Benner first created ‘unnatural’ bases in the 1980s.”
This is the first step toward the Zombie Apocalypse.
Another issue then is one of binding energies and relative affinities, to ensure error-free coding.
Oh yes, and chirality.
Another issue then is one of binding energies and relative affinities, to ensure error-free coding.
Oh yes, and chirality.
Thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks.
That’s going to play hell with the movie “GATTACA”.
Gattaca will have to change Freeper names.
LOL
If there are mystery strands of genetic DNA, Ancient Aliens theorists say Yes, they are from extraterrestrials.
‘cue up the Michael Tsooucalos picture.
No. Please read Stosh’s #21, and you’ll see what I meant.
I do not count nucleotides that have only been produced in a lab as part of the nucleic acid alphabet.
We have been using inosine in DNA sequencing for decades to help with “reading” difficult regions (for instance, those with a high GC content). But I do not know anyone who counts inosine as one of the nucleic acid letters.
While the artificial nucleotides might have utility in research, since they do not have biological function (at least within the DNA/RNA systems), they should not count as letters.
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