"Wild" Genomic Engineering

As I searched for an interesting blog topic (no news-related topic this week, I feel like I've lived under a rock while studying), I came across what I believe to be a controversial scientific advancement. Scientists are “creating” novel genomes in bacteria.

These scientists are completely recoding E.coli to have an entirely new genome. Through this, the bacteria are able to produce proteins which are not naturally produced by E. coli. For this portion of the project, all 321 instances of a particular codon were replaced with a different codon that encoded a different amino acid than the one originally encoded.

In a second project, the scientists removed every instance in which 13 codons occurred in 42 different E. coli genes. These codons were replaced with similarly functioning codons from different organisms. In total, 24% of the DNA in these genes had been changed, but because the codons were similarly functioning replacements, the bacteria produced the same exact proteins as it did originally.

So the second project, not so controversial. It seems as though this sort of information could be useful through a broad spectrum of scientific applications. The first project, on the other hand, seems to be more questionable to me. If this sort of thing fell into the wrong hands, mass “superbug” outbreaks could occur or genetically altered bacteria could be used in bioterrorism. (Even moreso than bacteria have already been used in biological weaponry.)

On a completely unrelated sidenote, a high school kid found a baby dinosaur skeleton in 2009. I am insanely jealous as I am completely geek-ily obsessed with dinosaurs. They nicknamed the skeleton “Joe.” How lame! ( I mean I am jealous so..) I would've named it something cool like Mike or something! Haha!