Artificial DNA grown and demonstrating inheritance, maybe evolution

[FAST6191]

http://www.nature.com/news/enzymes-grow-artificial-dna-1.10487
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/20/artificial_dna_evolves_by_itself/

Last few weeks ( http://gbatemp.net/topic/324058-new-fossil-points-to-another-line-of-hominins/ ) and probably even years are almost enough to make me regret sidelining biology in favour of the other two. Although you would never catch me saying otherwise go science.

To my eye it is not quite a demonstration of abiogenesis* (although the people simulating early earth conditions and working from there are doing quite well and have been for a while) but I imagine that is where they will head next.

*the study of how life might have arisen in the first place/"from the ooze" as opposed to evolution which is the study of how the primitive life forms scaled up/sideways to what we see today and what we might see tomorrow given certain conditions.

 

[Gahars]

This is a really fascinating development, and I'm sad that more people (at least on this forum) aren't giving it the attention it deserves. Come on, guys, really?

 

[Shinigami357]

I can't really understand some of the biological/biochemical terminology [my science of choice was physics back in HS], but this is awesome!

So basically, they made synthetic molecules that more-or-less resembles DNA that exhibits some of the same characteristics of the real thing and they're using that to see if they can isolate the NA, which is the basis of RNA and DNA. Fascinating stuff. Maybe in a couple decades we can see where it all began?

 

[ScarletCrystals]

I wonder what the structure of XNA looks like.
After all, DNA and RNA only differ by one oxygen atom.