Japanese Scientists Create Artificial DNA

Some complain that modern life contains too many artificial aspects: concrete instead of countryside, the internet instead of interaction, and all those sweeteners in our food. Just wait till they hear about the Japanese scientists who've rewritten DNA with entirely artificial basepairs.

DeoxyriboNucleic Acid is one of the most famous "sciencey-looking images" there is, a double helix structure with basepairs ascending like a twisted ladder. Each rung is an A/T or G/C pair, composed of Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine. Researchers at the Toyoma School of Pharmaceutical Sciences have built synthetic stand-ins for all your, originally titled A*, T*, iG* and iC*.

Don't worry, Apple haven't extended their branding into the very coding of life (just yet). The "i" stands for "iso", indicating that the hydrogen-bonding pattern is reversed when these artificial units are used. We're not exactly sure what the implications of that are, but suspect it has something to do with the eventual artificial lifeforms turning evil and killing us all.

These counterfeit chromosome constructors report that these synthetic structures could be used in genetic engineering, displaying similar stability and behavior to natural DNA while remaining tunable with the choice of artificial basepairs. They also note that it is more resilient than the real thing against naturally occurring enzymes like DNase.