08.05.2014 - 15:32 [ Nature ]

First life with ‚alien‘ DNA; An engineered bacterium is able to copy DNA that contains unnatural genetic letters.

For billions of years, the history of life has been written with just four letters — A, T, C and G, the labels given to the DNA subunits contained in all organisms. That alphabet has just grown longer, researchers announce, with the creation of a living cell that has two ‚foreign‘ DNA building blocks in its genome.