ArticleNature2017
A semi-synthetic organism that stores and retrieves increased genetic information.
Article in Nature, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 150 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
150 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 350 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cell-Free Approach for Non-canonical Amino Acids Incorporation Into Polypeptides.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2020Pooled it
- Site-Specific Protein Bioconjugation Through Cellular Incorporation of Noncanonical Amino Acids.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Review
- Quantifying replication fidelity of unnatural base pairs using nanopore sequencing.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Single-residue engineering of Klenow fragment enables broad acceptance of chemically modified nucleotides.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- High-resolution melting analysis for rapid and cost-effective detection of unnatural base pairs.Biodesign research · 2026Article
- Beyond the Sequence: Chemical and Topological Design and Innovations in mRNA Therapeutics.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- High-Affinity Six-Letter DNA XenoAptamer Generation by Genetic Alphabet Expansion.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Recoding multiple rare codons enables the simultaneous incorporation of up to five distinct noncanonical amino acids.Nature chemistry · 2026Article
- Stability and Reactivity of Alternative Nucleobases in Concentrated Sulfuric Acid.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Advances and challenges in non-canonical nucleic acids data storage.Nature communications · 2026Review
- Long Single-Stranded DNA with Site-Specific Modifications to Enable Single-Base-Resolution Epigenetics.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Recognition of unnatural base pairs by a eukaryotic DNA polymerase enables universal sequencing of an expanded genetic alphabet.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Expanded genetic alphabet increases structural and chemical diversity of six-letter DNA for high-affinity protein-targeting aptamers.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Engineering and Assay of Enzymes for Expanded Genetic Alphabet Replication.Biochemistry · 2025Article
- Structure-informed models for ionic current prediction in nanopore sequencing of expanded dna alphabets.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- An unnatural base pair for the detection of epigenetic cytosine modifications in DNA.Nature chemistry · 2025Article
- Extending dynamic and operational range of the biosensor responding to l-carnitine by directed evolution.Synthetic and systems biotechnology · 2025Article
- Direct high-throughput deconvolution of non-canonical bases via nanopore sequencing and bootstrapped learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Efficient genetic code expansion without host genome modifications.Nature biotechnology · 2025Article
- Residue-Specific Incorporation of Noncanonical Amino Acids in Auxotrophic Hosts:Chemical reviews · 2025Review
90 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Since at least the last common ancestor of all life on Earth, genetic information has been stored in a four-letter alphabet that is propagated and retrieved by the formation of two base pairs. The central goal of synthetic biology is to create new life forms and functions, and the most general route to this goal is the creation of semi-synthetic organisms whose DNA harbours two additional letters that form a third, unnatural base pair. Previous efforts to generate such semi-synthetic organisms culminated in the creation of a strain of Escherichia coli that, by virtue of a nucleoside triphosphate transporter from Phaeodactylum tricornutum, imports the requisite unnatural triphosphates from its medium and then uses them to replicate a plasmid containing the unnatural base pair dNaM-dTPT3. Although the semi-synthetic organism stores increased information when compared to natural organisms, retrieval of the information requires in vivo transcription of the unnatural base pair into mRNA and tRNA, aminoacylation of the tRNA with a non-canonical amino acid, and efficient participation of the unnatural base pair in decoding at the ribosome. Here we report the in vivo transcription of DNA containing dNaM and dTPT3 into mRNAs with two different unnatural codons and tRNAs with cognate unnatural anticodons, and their efficient decoding at the ribosome to direct the site-specific incorporation of natural or non-canonical amino acids into superfolder green fluorescent protein. The results demonstrate that interactions other than hydrogen bonding can contribute to every step of information storage and retrieval. The resulting semi-synthetic organism both encodes and retrieves increased information and should serve as a platform for the creation of new life forms and functions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.