AI DNA? NFW!

A good friend of mine, who is a physician, asked me a fair question while I was writing Existential Thread.  Is it possible for an artificial life form to actually have DNA?  I admit that it sounds pretty far-fetched.  But, once again, science has proven to be weirder than sci-fi. 

Two separate articles published last year documented the fact that scientists created synthetic DNA that contain extra letters and bacteria with a synthetic genome.

The first, published by LifeScience.com (https://www.livescience.com/amp/64829-hachimoji-dna.html) explains that in addition to the four natural nitrogenous bases (A, T, G and C), researchers developed four synthetically-made nucleotide bases (P, B, Z and S).  And importantly, the DNA was able to copy its information to the RNA.

 The second was reported by the NY Times on May 15, 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/science/synthetic-genome-bacteria.html).  Like the LifeScience article, this one is above my pay grade, but I was fascinated by the reference to the fact that synthetic genomes could offer the potential to recode DNA making cells immune to invasion by a specific virus.  Perhaps a tantalizing thought as other scientists today are scrambling to combat COVID-19.

 So, yes.  Way!