New DNA Code Makes Synthetic Proteins

August 24, 2015

(The San Diego Union-Tribune) – The world’s first functioning organism with an expanded DNA alphabet has now met another milestone in artificial life: making proteins that don’t exist in nature. The organism, a bacterium created by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute, incorporates two synthetic DNA letters, called X and Y, along with the four natural ones, A, T, C and G. A team led by Floyd Romesberg published a study last year demonstrating that the organism, an engineered strain of E. coli, can function and replicate with the synthetic DNA.