Live from Salt Lake City #2 Redefining DNA: Darwin fro the atom up

"In a dramatic rewrite of the recipe for life, scientists from Florida described the design of a new type of DNA on Monday March 23 at the 237th National Meet inf of the American Chemical Society. This artificial DNA with 12 chemical letters instead of the usual four is helping to usher in the era of personalized medicine for millions of patients with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases.

"The research may also shed light on how life arose on Earth, by producing a self-sustaining molecule capable of Darwinian evolution and reproduction, much like one that many scientists suggest arose at the dawn of life on Earth nearly four billion years ago."

This paper is COMSCI 001 "Modern synthetic biology:Darwin from the atom up" presented by Steven A. Benner Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution 1115 NW 4th Street, Gainsville, FL 32601

The main reason for this research is not to explore human evolution, but to develop multiplexed diagnostic test for viral diseases - - test that require identification and tagging of viral DNA. Old methods used regular DNA to bind and tag foreign genetic material. But natural DNA would often bind with non-disease DNA and generate confusing false positive and false negative results.
This artificial synthetic system does not operate on Watson-Crick rules, so the tagging gives more accurate results. The artificial alphabet already has been applied commercially. It is the basis of a viral load detector, which helps personalize the health care of those 400,000 patients annually infected with hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV, the cause of AIDS.

"For patients with HIV and hepatitis, the viral load detector can mean the difference between life and death"

"Brenner says that the artifical DNA system is poised to become an essential tool in genomic research. The 12 letter alphabet already luderlies new work at the National Human Genome Research Institute to connect large quantities of genomic data with human medicine."

Note: The information for this comes from a press release written by the American Chemical Society Office of Public Affairs.