But now, a team from Stanford University has found that a type of enzyme known as a polymerase can work without a blueprint. Its shape itself acts as a mold that new DNA can be synthesized from, with no external reference materials required.<\/p>\n
This has never been seen before.<\/p>\n
While it’s not quite a discovery that rewrites the science textbooks, it certainly adds an intriguing new chapter (or three). There are implications for bacteria behavior<\/a>, biological evolution, and the building blocks of life.<\/p>\n “The enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids is a fundamental process that underlies genome replication, repair, and diverse forms of information processing across all domains of life,” write<\/a> the researchers in their published paper.<\/p>\n “These findings expand the functional landscape of nucleic acid polymerases, revealing a protein-templated mechanism for sequence-specific DNA synthesis.”<\/p>\n The impetus behind the study was to look at defense-associated reverse transcriptases (DRTs), which bacteria use to fend off attacks by viruses<\/a>. Scientists have already seen<\/a> some unusual DNA-building behavior in these polymerases.<\/p>\n Specifically, the team cloned a DRT3 system from Escherichia coli bacteria<\/a>, examining its behavior in test tubes and in living cells. That revealed three parts of a DNA-making machine: two enzymes called Drt3a and Drt3b, plus a piece of non-coding RNA.<\/p>\n It was Drt3b that turned out to be the big surprise, doing its part of the DNA construction work<\/a> without any external templates to refer to. It’s an all-in-one mechanism that has never been seen before.<\/p>\n Our current understanding of biology suggests that genetic information flows from a DNA blueprint<\/a> to the builder proteins. But with Drt3b that process is self-contained \u2013 the layout of the assembly line effectively acts as its own blueprint by dictating how the DNA is coded.<\/p>\n “The protein itself serves as the blueprint for the DNA sequence,” Stanford biochemist Alex Gao tells<\/a> Richard Stone at Science. “That was quite a surprise. This is a fundamentally new way that life produces DNA.”<\/p>\n For now, the researchers aren’t entirely sure how bacteria use DRT3 to protect themselves against attacking viruses. And while it may seem like a very specific use case, that doesn’t mean we can’t find other things to use it for.<\/p>\n CRISPR<\/a> also began as a natural bacterial defense system, before scientists borrowed it to make the groundbreaking gene-editing technique<\/a>.<\/p>\n Further down the line there’s the possibility that the trick used by Drt3b could be harnessed and engineered too \u2013 though that’s still a long way off.<\/p>\n While scientists are already working on ways<\/a> to construct synthetic DNA in the lab, the particular Drt3b polymerase studied here is made as a very specific and fixed mold. It’s going to be difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to reprogram it for other uses.<\/p>\n Related: A New DNA-Printing Technique Could Revolutionize How We Store Data<\/a><\/p>\n Further studies are also going to be required to understand exactly how DRT3 fights off virus attacks<\/a>, and how the bacteria is using it. That should provide more insight into the construction of this kind of DNA and how it might be used.<\/p>\n There’s also the question of how this efficient shortcut came to be. The researchers predict DRT3 will be active across many bacterial strains, and that it has a long evolutionary history as a way of combating viruses<\/a> while expending as little energy as possible.<\/p>\n “Altogether, the DRT3 system employs an unexpected mechanism of biological information transfer, expanding the remarkable repertoire of nucleic acid\u2013based strategies in anti-phage defense,” write<\/a> the researchers.<\/p>\n![\"DNA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/DNAPic.jpg\")
How the DNA-building factor looked under cryo-electron microscopy, showing multiple enzymes at work. (Deng et al., Science, 2026)<\/p>\n![\"Subscribe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Generic-Health-Promo-Final-642x273.jpg\")
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