Michael White – Why DNA Is One of Humanity’s Greatest Inventions

From Pacific Standard, this is an interesting article on how humans are using DNA — ours and other species’ — to change the world. One wonders if that is such a good thing considering how little we still know about how DNA functions. Why DNA Is One of Humanity’s Greatest Inventions By Michael White • … Read more

An Engineered Bacterium Is Able to Copy DNA that Contains Unnatural Genetic Letters

For all of recorded history, billions of years, the blueprint of life has been written with just four letters — adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G), the DNA subunits contained in all organisms. Now that has changed. Scientists at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, have identified a pair of bases, … Read more