Scientists Create a Completely New, Never Seen Before Life Form
All life on Earth is based on a structure which holds 4 "bytes" of information in the DNA (represented by the letters G, T, C and A). While the letters have no importance whatsoever - and I admit I have no idea what they mean - the fact that they are only and only 4, is very important. Every DNA of every life form on Earth is built this way. That's what we call "life".
According to an article published today, in Science Alert, scientists created a semi-synthetic form of life with a DNA code holding 6 bytes of information. There are 2 more letters describing this new code, X and Y (again, I have no idea what they mean, but the fact that they exist is important).
For the first time in the history of human kind we created a life form which is fundamentally different from us. And when I say 'us" I refer to every life form on Earth. It's a bit scary. It means that this new DNA can act differently and can learn new ways to adapt to reality. It's literally an alien life form.
For those of you interested in the details, I invite you to read the article.
For those interested in just a rough translation of the meaning I will just add that this new life form can hold more information in its structure. If we would compare this bacteria they made (it's a version of E coli bacteria) with a computer, we could say that it has literally more storage space, like a bigger HDD and RAM.
The words "creating an enhanced human being" just got real. The time to market for such a technology may be longer than we think, probably one generation, but the fact that this is possible is absolutely stunning.
image source - Pixabay
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Cytosin
Guanin
Thymin
Adenin
Those are amino acids (there are more, 20 I think).
X and Y mean nothing, just placeholders those two normally are ;)
sheesh glad it was not 8 bit, or they would have cloned me.
you can always upload your consciousness in the blockchain, if that will happen. IMHO.
You mean you want me to put my consciousness in my wallet?
The future is going to be weird.
Not if you import your private keys first.
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Interesting, my friend, but perhaps a little overstated? What I mean is that, this would be somewhat analogous to saying:
"Writers Create a Completely New, Never Seen Before Shakespeare" and then explaining that these "writers" have replaced all instances of "you" with "y'all" instead. Romeo and Juliet would still be readable, but with a slight southern accent... ;)
Indeed... We do know a lot more about life than we did when I was a boy, but mostly what we have learned is that it is incredibly complex and not susceptible to easy re-design.
After reading your source article, the achievement seems to boil down to having figured out how to insert a couple of "new letters" into the alphabet without killing the original organism.
I don't mean to minimize the usefulness of this - but for the moment, my sense is that it could be a way to encode and store information into living and replicating organisms for posterity. Sort of like the Steemit blockchain has properties that may enable archiving data for posterity.
I can agree to disagree. Recoding DNA in this way is not like shuffling alphabet letters. It's like creating a new alphabet entirely.
And so, to briefly continue our disagreement... ;)
OK, so, you've added two letters - X, Y... but, what do they mean? They have no "meaning" in the sense that they do not encode for proteins. They are merely "noise" in the context of an otherwise meaningful alphabet. What we have so far is an interesting experiment, more of a stunt... not really anything that can truly be called "new" in the general context of "life."
Will they gain meaning in the future? Perhaps, but there is no indication at this point that they will.
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Whoa.
My thoughts exactly.