Harvard geneticists create an organism that is immune to all viruses.
Researchers at George Chuch’s Harvard lab have genetically engineered a bacteria, E. coli, to be totally immune to viruses.
In addition to blocking every virus the team has challenged it with thus far, their E. coli has also been designed so that its modified genes cannot escape into the wild, which does indeed sound like the plot of a lost Michael Crichton novel. (In fact, the parallels to Jurassic Park are there, but we’ll get to that.)
“We believe we have developed the first technology to design an organism that can’t be infected by any known virus,” genetics research fellow and study author Akos Nyerges said.
“We can’t say it’s fully virus-resistant, but so far, based on extensive laboratory experiments and computational analysis, we haven’t found a virus that can break it.”
Enter RNA: The new work centers around a specific type of RNA called transfer RNA (tRNA).
The tRNA’s job is to recognize each codon in DNA and then add the correct amino acid to whatever protein is being created — kind of like putting a key component into a car on the factory line. The Cambridge team had deleted codons called TCG and TCA and the tRNA that recognizes them from their bacteria. Both of those codons direct the tRNA to install serine, an amino acid, onto the protein getting put together.
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