Scientists have created a more perfect version of E. coli. What could possibly go wrong?
Your Back Page scribbler is a big fan of scientific research. The more we understand how the world works, the more chance we have of addressing some of the existential threats we’ve so recklessly created in the first place, etc etc.
Having said that, sometimes we come across exploratory endeavours that make us go … hmmmmmm.
Today’s entrant in that category involves boffins at the UK’s Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology who have announced they’ve created a new form of life that is more perfect than anything nature has managed to come up with so far.
Their creation, called “Syn57”, is a bacteria that has been bioengineered from a strain of E. Coli, with a genetic code the researchers say is “more efficient than any other lifeform on Earth” and represents a “new chapter in the genetic code of life”.
Am I the only one who gets a little twitchy when he hears such news?
But we’ll suppress, for now, the urge to scream “What could possibly go wrong!” and provide the dummies’ version of what they’ve done.
The keys to this creation are critters called “codons”. These are the three-letter sequences found in DNA and RNA which delivers instructions for those life-building molecules which are amino acids.
Up until now, and we are talking billions of years evolution here, all life on Earth has used 64 codons.
Back in 1966, genetic scientists were able to crack the code which revealed which codons corresponded to which amino acids, and what the discovered, intriguingly, was that there were only 20 amino acids involved.
In other words, Mother Nature was an inefficient creator because some of these codons were redundant. Which begged the question: “Could a more efficient form of life be created that used less codons than the current 64?”
And thanks to a team of scientists from Cambridge University we now know that the answer is yes. Because “Syn57” is a form of life that only needs — you guessed it — 57 codons.
In order to create this synthetic form of life, the researchers undertook the arduous processing of altering more than 101,000 lines of genetic code — first in theory, then in practice.
What’s more, although synthetic bacteria had already been created earlier, back in 2010, advances in DNA synthesis means that these gene-fiddlers can now manufacture genomes from scratch, avoiding some of the redundant codons from the start.
Which also means, according to Akos Nyerges, a synthetic biologist at Harvard University, “You can start exploring what life will tolerate. We can finally test these alternative genetic codes.”
That sounds all very well and good, but, to be very clear, what we now have is a synthetic version of the nasty little bugger that causes diarrhoea and vomiting in humans, only it’s in a more perfect and efficient form.
Really doesn’t sound like the type of thing you’d want to somehow escape from a laboratory and create a gastroenterological-themed pandemic, does it?
Send future nightmare scenarios and story tips to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
