First-ever animal with artificial information in its genetic code is created by scientists

By Daily Mail Reporter

The world’s first animal with artificial information in its genetic code has been created by scientists.

The technique could throw open the possibility for scientists to create new, man-made properties in a wide range of animals.

Using this method, scientists could be granted ‘atom-by-atom control’ over molecules in living things.

Researchers from Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge modified the genetic code of nematode worms, 1mm long invertebrates with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies.

The team proved their results using a fluorescent dye - the artificial protein they introduced into the worms’ DNA contained a fluorescent dye that glows cherry red under ultraviolet light.

For the method to have worked, the protein should be replicated in every cell of the worms’ bodies, so that the worms light up completely under the rays.

If the technique failed, there would be no glow.

All living creatures contain DNA in each of their cells, which acts as a blueprint to determine the organism’s characteristics.

This DNA is made of strings of simpler building blocks called amino acids, which, depending on their combinations, make the different proteins needed to sustain life.

There are just 20 different amino acids in all living organisms, but their different combinations result in tens of thousands of different proteins.

However, scientists Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin included a 21st, man-made amino acid which is not found in nature, in the nematode worms’ DNA.

This is the first time a man-made amino acid has been introduced into the DNA of an animal.

Dr Chin of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology says the method is ‘potentially transformational’.

Researchers could now be able to create designer proteins entirely under their control.

The work builds on techniques first developed at the Scripps Research Institute in the U.S., where Dr Chin worked a decade ago.

Here researchers found a way to include an unnatural amino acid into a living organism.

However, researchers only got as far as introducing the artificial amino acid into bacterium E. coli.

It is only now that scientists have succeeded in introducing one into a whole animal.

Dr Mario de Bono also at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and an expert on this species of worm, believes this approach could be used to introduce other amino acids into the animals that could be controlled by light.

Meanwhile, the two scientists are now planning to collaborate on a study of neural cells in the nematode brain, aiming to activate or deactivate neurons with tiny laser flashes.

The study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.