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Researchers Create "Hachimoji" DNA and RNA With Four Additional Bases

posted by mrpg on Saturday February 23 2019, @01:44PM   
from the Erlenmeyer-Flask-2 dept.

takyon writes:

NASA-Funded Research Creates DNA-like Molecule to Aid Search for Alien Life

In a research breakthrough funded by NASA, scientists have synthesized a molecular system that, like DNA, can store and transmit information. This unprecedented feat suggests there could be an alternative to DNA-based life, as we know it on Earth – a genetic system for life that may be possible on other worlds.

This new molecular system, which is not a new life form, suggests scientists looking for life beyond Earth may need to rethink what they are looking for. The research appears in Thursday's edition of Science Magazine.

[...] The synthetic DNA includes the four nucleotides present in Earth life – adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine – but also four others that mimic the structures of the informational ingredients in regular DNA. The result is a double-helix structure that can store and transfer information.

[Steven] Benner's team, which collaborated with laboratories at the University of Texas in Austin, Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis, and DNA Software in Ann Arbor, Michigan, dubbed their creation "hachimoji" DNA (from the Japanese "hachi," meaning "eight," and "moji," meaning "letter"). Hachimoji DNA meets all the structural requirements that allow our DNA to store, transmit and evolve information in living systems.

Also at NYT, Discover Magazine, and ScienceAlert.

Hachimoji DNA and RNA: A genetic system with eight building blocks (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat0971) (DX)

Related: Scientists Add Letters X and Y to DNA Alphabet
Scientists Engineer First Semisynthetic Organism With Three-base-pair DNA
How Scientists Are Altering DNA to Genetically Engineer New Forms of Life
Synthetic X and Y Bases Direct the Production of a Protein With "Unnatural" Amino Acids

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Original Submission

• Re:life, as we know it Re:life, as we know it (Score: 3, Informative) by stormwyrm on Sunday February 24 2019, @02:44AM (2 children)

  by stormwyrm (717) on Sunday February 24 2019, @02:44AM (#805820) Journal

  Boron is hardly what I'd call abundant in the cosmic scheme of things. It's actually a very rare element as it can't be made in bulk by any of the usual stellar and supernova processes, unlike carbon which is by contrast ridiculously common, since it is a direct product of stellar nuclear fusion. The universe started out with a lot of hydrogen and a little less helium, and very little of anything else. Given those two, stellar nuclear fusion can make hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, carbon into nitrogen, etc. all the way up to iron, while stellar burning processes and supernovae can make even heavier elements. So just about every element in the periodic table can be made by those mechanisms, except for three: lithium, beryllium, and boron. The only known way these three elements can be made is from cosmic ray spallation [wikipedia.org] or possibly from the slightly less violent nuclear reactions in a stellar nova [soylentnews.org] (not a supernova, mind). I thus don't see it likely that boron plays much of a starring role in any form of alien life given its relative rarity. Though even so, remarkably, boron does seem to play a minor biological role [wikipedia.org] in normal earth life.

  --
  Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.

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• Leeloo Dallas multipass (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:58PM

  by Pino P (4721) on Sunday February 24 2019, @03:58PM (#805951) Journal

  I thus don't see it likely that boron plays much of a starring role in any form of alien life given its relative rarity.

  Boron... rarity... Is that what made Milla Jovovich's character Leeloo from The Fifth Element so special?

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• Re:life, as we know it (Score: 3, Interesting) by EvilSS on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:16PM

  by EvilSS (1456) on Sunday February 24 2019, @05:16PM (#805972)

  Stellar abundance is only part of the equation. Look at earth, it's relatively rare yet it is essential (not a minor role, maybe expand past Wikipedia) for most plant life on earth. There are huge deposits of borates on the crust. Boron nitride has been proposed as one of the carbon alternatives for life chemistry for its ability to form stable carbon-like structures, including rings (borazine) that are essential for the complex chemistry of life.

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