{"id":94410,"date":"2025-08-26T17:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T17:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/94410\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T17:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T17:18:10","slug":"breakthrough-as-scientists-create-a-new-form-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/94410\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakthrough as scientists create a new form life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have engineered a strain of bacteria with a genetic code unlike anything found in nature, marking a groundbreaking advance in synthetic biology.<\/p>\n

The microbe, called Syn57, is a lab-made version of Escherichia coli, a bacterium that normally causes infections in the gut, urinary tract and other parts of the body.<\/p>\n

Unlike all known life<\/a>, which relies on 64 codons, or three-letter DNA sequences that tell cells how to build proteins, Syn57 uses just 57 codons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Think of DNA as a cookbook where each codon is a three-letter word telling the cell which amino acids, or ingredients, to use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Life normally has some duplicate instructions, but Syn57 strips out the extras while still functioning perfectly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These freed-up codons open the door to entirely new possibilities, allowing scientists to create proteins and synthetic compounds that nature has never produced.<\/p>\n

Syn57’s unusual genetic code also makes it resistant to viruses<\/a>, which rely on the standard DNA language to hijack cells. And because its code is so different, it is less likely to mix with natural organisms, easing safety concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This breakthrough could also pave the way for new medicines, advanced materials and synthetic lifeforms beyond anything seen in nature.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The microbe, named Syn57, is a lab-engineered version of Escherichia coli, a bacterium that can naturally cause infections in the gut, urinary tract and other areas of the body<\/p>\n

To tackle this huge project, scientists divided the genome into 38 pieces, each about 100,000 DNA letters long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They built each piece in yeast and then inserted it into E coli using a method called uREXER, which combines CRISPR-Cas9 and other tools to swap in synthetic DNA in one step.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some genome regions slowed growth or resisted changes, but the team solved these issues by adjusting gene sequences, untangling overlapping genes, and carefully choosing which codons to swap.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Step by step, the fragments were stitched together into the final, fully synthetic bacterium.<\/p>\n

The result, Syn57, is the most heavily redesigned organism ever made, demonstrating that life can survive with a much smaller, simpler genetic code.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wesley Robertson, a synthetic biologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory in the UK, told the New York Times<\/a>: ‘We definitely went through these periods where we were like, ‘Well, will this be a dead end, or can we see this through?’<\/p>\n

Syn57 is alive, but barely. While normal E. coli can double in an hour, Syn57 takes four, making it ‘extremely feeble,’ Yonatan Chemla, a synthetic biologist at MIT who was not involved in the study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bacteria grew on a jelly-like surface and in a nutritious liquid, but at four times slower than their natural counterparts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Robertson and his team are now experimenting to see if they can make it grow faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If successful, scientists could eventually program it to do tasks that ordinary bacteria cannot.<\/p>\n

In addition to the 20 standard amino acids that all life uses to make proteins, chemists can create hundreds of others.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Syn57’s seven missing codons could potentially be reassigned to these unnatural amino acids, allowing the bacterium to produce new drugs or other useful molecules.<\/p>\n

Syn57 could also make engineered microbes safer for the environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Microbes swap genes easily, which can be risky if engineered DNA spreads.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But a gene from Syn57 would be gibberish to natural bacteria because of its unique genetic code, preventing it from being used outside the lab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have engineered a strain of bacteria with a genetic code unlike anything found in nature, marking a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[97,59,102,1996,124,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-94410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-new-york-times","12":"tag-sciencetech","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}