Thursday, November 30, 2017

Artificial Bacteria: The Stand, For Real

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Stephen King's epic post-apocalyptic battle between good and evil begins when a lab-created strain of the flu gets out into the public, and kills most of civilization.

In a race to create a novel protein-based drug from synthetic biology, scientists in La Jolla's Scripp's Research Institute near San Diego, California have created artificial DNA building blocks that, once in play, producing new proteins containing unnatural amino acids.

A basic DNA strand has four building blocks (A, T, C, and G), but the two new artificial blocks (X and Y) can be used to store extra genetic information inside cell.  The new science can then be used to create drugs based on new genomic hybrids.

According to the Associated Press, the science (synthetic biology) can be used to "design organisms that work differently from the way nature intended so scientists can harness them to create designer drugs, biofuels or a range of other products. Scripps’ technology has been licensed by a biotech company Romesberg co-founded, Synthorx Inc., that aims to make novel protein-based drugs."

Good intentions.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Are they also, without perhaps realizing it (or perhaps fully realizing what they are doing), creating the first steps to the next great plague, as well?

We've got the CERN Hadron Collider claiming they are opening small doorways into another dimension, we've got scientists who are cloning organisms, we've got drones the size of locusts capable of killing people (theoretically, anyways), and now we have synthetic DNA building blocks being created expanding the storage size for genetic information in bacteria.  What could possibly go wrong?

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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