
Most Extensive Reengineering of an Organism’s Genetic Code Now Complete - JumpCrisscross
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-extensive-reengineering-of-an-organism-s-genetic-code-now-complete/
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DiffEq
I have odds that this will not work out the way they think it will.

“They can also be made entirely dependent on synthetic amino acids in their
diets, to allay the fear that recoded bacteria could escape from a lab and
wreak havoc in the wild.”

I say this becasue of this well known experiment:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-
term_evolution_ex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-
term_evolution_experiment)

Whether you accept the E. Coli long term evolution experiment as proof of
evolution or not, it clearly does show at least the capacity for E. coli to
figure out how to eat different things.

~~~
a_bonobo
The difference between the long-term experiment and the OP one's here is that
the E. coli could survive many, many generations since it was growing on a
limited, but not depleted medium. The 'novel' bacteria in OP's text do not
seem to have such a limited medium, they'd die in one generation.

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okket
see also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12314957)

