<p>A team at Princeton University has constructed genetic sequences never before seen in nature and showed that they can produce substances which sustain life in cells as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.<br /><br />"What we've here are molecular machines that function quite well within a living organism even though they were designed from scratch and expressed from artificial genes.<br /><br />"This tells us that the molecular parts kit for life need not be limited to parts -- genes and proteins -- that already exist in nature," said Prof Michael Hecht, who led the research.<br /><br />He added: "Our work suggests that the construction of artificial genomes capable of sustaining cell life may be within reach." Nearly all previous work in synthetic biology has focused on reorganising parts drawn from natural organisms.<br /><br />In contrast, the results described by the team show that biological functions can be provided by macromolecules that were not borrowed from nature, but designed in the laboratory, says Hecht. <br /><br />Although scientists have shown previously that proteins can be designed to fold and, in some cases, catalyse reactions, the Princeton team's work represents a new frontier in creating these synthetic proteins.<br /><br />For their research, Hecht and the students in his lab study the relationship between biological processes on the molecular scale and processes at work on a larger magnitude.<br /><br />Proteins are the workhorses of organisms, produced from instructions encoded into cellular DNA. The identity of any given protein is dictated by a unique sequence of 20 chemicals known as amino acids. If the different amino acids can be viewed as letters of an alphabet, each protein sequence constitutes its own unique "sentence."<br /><br />The team set about to create artificial proteins encoded by genetic sequences not seen in nature. They produced about 1 million amino acid sequences that were designed to fold into stable three-dimensional structures.<br /><br />"What I believe is most intriguing about our work is that the information encoded in these artificial genes is completely novel -- it does not come from, nor is it related to, information encoded by natural genes, and yet the end result is a living, functional microbe," said team member Michael Fisher. The findings have been published in the 'PLoS ONE' journal.</p>
<p>A team at Princeton University has constructed genetic sequences never before seen in nature and showed that they can produce substances which sustain life in cells as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.<br /><br />"What we've here are molecular machines that function quite well within a living organism even though they were designed from scratch and expressed from artificial genes.<br /><br />"This tells us that the molecular parts kit for life need not be limited to parts -- genes and proteins -- that already exist in nature," said Prof Michael Hecht, who led the research.<br /><br />He added: "Our work suggests that the construction of artificial genomes capable of sustaining cell life may be within reach." Nearly all previous work in synthetic biology has focused on reorganising parts drawn from natural organisms.<br /><br />In contrast, the results described by the team show that biological functions can be provided by macromolecules that were not borrowed from nature, but designed in the laboratory, says Hecht. <br /><br />Although scientists have shown previously that proteins can be designed to fold and, in some cases, catalyse reactions, the Princeton team's work represents a new frontier in creating these synthetic proteins.<br /><br />For their research, Hecht and the students in his lab study the relationship between biological processes on the molecular scale and processes at work on a larger magnitude.<br /><br />Proteins are the workhorses of organisms, produced from instructions encoded into cellular DNA. The identity of any given protein is dictated by a unique sequence of 20 chemicals known as amino acids. If the different amino acids can be viewed as letters of an alphabet, each protein sequence constitutes its own unique "sentence."<br /><br />The team set about to create artificial proteins encoded by genetic sequences not seen in nature. They produced about 1 million amino acid sequences that were designed to fold into stable three-dimensional structures.<br /><br />"What I believe is most intriguing about our work is that the information encoded in these artificial genes is completely novel -- it does not come from, nor is it related to, information encoded by natural genes, and yet the end result is a living, functional microbe," said team member Michael Fisher. The findings have been published in the 'PLoS ONE' journal.</p>