A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information.

ABSTRACT: Since at least the last common ancestor of all life on Earth, genetic information has been stored in a four-letter alphabet that is propagated and retrieved by the formation of two base pairs. The central goal of synthetic biology is to create new life forms and functions, and the most general route to this goal is the creation of semi-synthetic organisms whose DNA harbours two additional letters that form a third, unnatural base pair. Previous efforts to generate such semi-synthetic organisms culminated in the creation of a strain of Escherichia coli that, by virtue of a nucleoside triphosphate transporter from Phaeodactylum tricornutum, imports the requisite unnatural triphosphates from its medium and then uses them to replicate a plasmid containing the unnatural base pair dNaM-dTPT3. Al

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5796663 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature