Quote:
Originally Posted by Nehkara
That is not just editing DNA, that is creating something completely new and different.
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No, I saw that, but that is still something that could be done using existing organisms more easily than from scratch. It is editing DNA in the sense that they are using DNA as a template and then adding to it, although not in the narrow sense of moving bits of it around or splicing in genes from dissimilar organisms as is done today. It's like deciding that moving from a 4 cylinder to a 12 cylinder engine requires an entirely new way of manufacturing automobiles, instead of reusing what designs and equipment you already have.
That was actually something else that puzzled me about this project - what is the point of using more bases? 4 seems more than adequate to express anything you want, considering that theoretically DNA could be reduced to 2 as it can be expressed as a binary code. I suppose for efficiency's sake you could denote the same sequence in less space by using a larger alphabet (much as the binary representation of this text would be quite a bit longer than the letters you see now), however, I am stumped as to what the benefit of that would be - its not like molecules are going to be in short supply anytime soon.
