If you guys think this is cool, you're gonna flip when you hear about the synthetic amino acids we've already incorporated into proteins. Now that we've got extra bases, maybe we can make new codons to finally code those synthetic amino acids into protein sequences. All we need now is new tRNAs, new tRNA loading enzymes for the new aa's, new biosynthesis pathways for those synthetic amino acids (that should only be 6-12 new genes we have to add to the organism), new biosynthesis pathways for the new nucleotides, proofreading enzymes for the new bases, polymerases that can handle the new bases without screwing up… sigh. Biology is hard. But awesome!
+It's Okay To Be Smart Much too complicated and at least currently pure SciFi. especially as this can be achieved easier: you can simply select a degenerate codon and substitute all of its occurences in the gene except selected place with a "sister"-codon. Then load the tRNAs for your selected codon with the non-standard amino acid and thus it will end up in the protein, exactly where you want it to.
All you biologists commenting that he should make more vids on biology, there's a link in the description that allows you to apply to help make sciencium episodes. Were I in the sciences and not a mechanic, I would certainly enjoy being a part of an awesome channel such as this! Hoorah science! :D
I'm more concerned that the organism dies when not given the means to produce X & Y, and that X & Y do not occur naturally. Meaning, if you engineered a human in such a way, they'll be kept on drugs from fertilization onward for the rest of their life. Or they'll die. And their kids would likely inherit the condition. That's about an 8.7 on the scale of distopian potential. I would guess that the body would also need sufficient saturation of these materials that everyday cell activities all have sufficient quantities readily available, or the individual might end up suffering from some sort of malnutrition-esque disease.
alex and cory and elena bestest frends der ever was Not to mention the students in the future. Biology can be confusing enough with the species and all.
Now send this ecoli on a virgin planet and let them evolve, develop consciousness and ask themselves how DNA came about and why there are 6 of them.. xD
Great new stuff but Schrödinger wasn't that revolutionary in biology. Biochemists already knew that there was a hereditary molecule and Avery et al. (1944) had already showed that it was DNA rather than proteins. They just didn't have the structure yet. Science is, afterall, standing on the shoulders of giants.
Dan Reader it's like the ternary computer. it exists, it works, but it is completely useless. why? no replacement parts, not compatible, not researched enough.
It's significant in that it's something new that shows what's possible, but we haven't seen anything come from it. There for example, isn't anything to indicate increased longevity for the organism or anything else beneficial. That could change, but the discovery could end up being for the most part, useless for practical science.
Cause it isn't that big of a deal. Yes they managed to add a base-pair - so what? Even with the 2 we got so far we have enough problems trying to manipulate them, let alone make accurate predictions about what will happen. And activists and some "ethic" commissions are still hindering research wherever they can. this extra pair will most likely play a big roll in the far future, but that is likely more than a few decades away from now.
Well, by adding 2 more bases the chances of having a random mutation during the replication of dna drastically increase, that might either lead to species capable of evolving extremely fast, or species that have too many malignous mutations in their dna that most of the individuals would die before being born
Why should the chances increase? Unless you know something about the stability or physical structure of that pair that we do not know you can not say how it will behave.
I don't think so. It's only ever replicating one letter at a time. Adding 2 more bases could actually reduce the chances because the DNA chain would be much smaller. This would decrease mutation and therefore decrease the rate of change in an organisms species over time. That might explain why nature decided on 4 bases. That was just the perfect ratio of mutations over time.
The chance of a mutation itself will not increase, but in case a mutation occurs, the chance that it will be silent will be reduced. The reason is that the DNA code is degenerated (several different codons code for the same amino acid). The less degenerated the code becomes, the higher the chances that an occuring mutation is not silent, although the difference is not that big.
well, if you imagine, an A should always be paired with a T right?, but in some cases that A gets paired with a C or G, now, with 2 more bases, that A will still be paired with a T, but mistakes can occur and it could be paired with a C G X or Y, do you see where i'm going here?
I like these Sciencium videos, but why are there only 4 with a 7,5 month gap now? I just tumbled upon this channel after watching Veritasium and I'd like to see more of both! Common, keep it up! :thumbsup:
In the telomere that lives inside us And the people walking down below, Crawling home alone like spiders As the cancer slowly starts to grow... - From " Curve of the Earth "album by the Indie Rock Band!
The 4 regular nucleic acids encode 20 amino acids in groups of 3 (codons). Of the 64 combinations of 3 nucleic acids 44 are unused (reserved for better mutation resistance due to their ambiguity). This means that only 31% of the information of DNA is actually used. With 6 different nucleic acids the codon size could be reduced to 2, so the information rate could be increased to 56% with the trade off of less ambiguity for mutation resistance.
18 yr olds in the 'nature-science program' in Sweden are probably talking about the exact same things (but not new discoveries) right now in school. I'm one of them, and luckily I found this vid very interesting! i feel like one day they will play this in class, very informative and well spoken. I like the chronological approach, it's very natural.
Derek, love the new channel, I jut have one more tip if you want your points to get across more easily. Add more misconceptions into these videos. You don't have to go out and ask people questions, just quickly add during one of your points, "most people would think _____ to be true, but actually, _____ ."
Guys i have a question; since the moon has no atmosphere you should be able to orbit it as close as you can right? Please leave your answers below, i have been wanting to ask this question for a long time. Also, please dont hate on my English, it's not my first language.
Stijn Nijland The moon actually does have an extremely thin atmosphere if I'm correct, but I think you still could orbit relatively close to its surface
If the Moon was perfectly uniform and spherical, you could orbit it at any altitude, but it isn't, so different parts of the Moon have slightly different gravity. The effect these small variations have on objects orbiting the Moon increase the closer the orbit, making most low lunar orbits very unstable.
You can orbit as close as you want, but since orbits around the Moon are not as stable as around Earth, you'll still need some fuel to stay on the exact same trajectory ("stationkeeping"). Also, watch out for mountains.
3.7 billion years... isn't that just typical Derek! The day you upload your vid, a group at UCL announce they have found evidence of life at around 4.2 billion years...
Turun Ambartanen life? Life = random reactions. Life = bacteria. Life = opportunistic survivors. Life = single-celled organism. Life = nature selects the genes. Life = a city. Life = a virus. We don't actually have any definition that fully covers what it is or what it's not, now that is a good question.
Your strongest work so far per each channel you have. Animations killed this. This channels brings out the best of you in the best way imaginable. Hoping your videos here will get into TV & cables.
Hey Derek, Im from Brazil and im planing to make a science channel here as good as possible. It wont be hard since im an Nanotecnology student and also an cinema lover. My question is: Should I record my videos in my local language (portuguese) or in english? One of them include my whole contry but excludes the most of the world and the other include every english speaker and the excludes 80% of Brazil. I love your videos, please get in touch if need any Nano Science Question or Samba classes.
Probably more like only 80. Because of mistakes the last pair can't hold that much information. U-G bond is weak, but strong enough for wrong tRNA to connect if first two pairs match.
I've seen Jurassic park, the Lysine contingency made the dinosaurs dependent on amino acid Lysine supplementation from the parks laboratory. Life found a way !
Sorry to tell you this, but you haven't created anything on this channel for one year now! Are you just too busy with Veratasium, Veratasium 2, and VRV right now?
If you are interested in genetics or RNA thereby, you might be interested in Eterna. Eterna is basically a video game in which the gamer creates RNA to create medicine. Of course, the first several levels are all about getting the right base pairs in the right order to create a particular shape. So if you are interested in that kind of thing check out Eterna game on Google you can play and become a member for free. I'm on like the 5th or 6th level, RNA Sequencer.
Wow this just instantly blew my mind. With 6 letter instead of 4 DNA chains could be shorted around 1.2 times (log4(6)). Assuming you could encode special ribsomes that are both able to produce and/or read those special X and Y letters they may even be able to reproduce outside of the lab. And maybe because of their superior genes rule the world. It's like we're doing evolution awesome!
this channel could've saved some of the kids in my grade 10 science class so much trouble. Such a good channel idea, kinda funny it wasn't thought of sooner.
This comment is not related to this video, but a suggestion for you to make Video about an optical phenomena. A couple of days ago I learned about an optical phenomena I had never seen before. The person talking about the phenomena described it as "light from your eyes in foggy mirrors". There are a lot of references to this on the net but mostly on non scientific forums where explanations include things such as "this is proof of the soul" or "inner energy". Apparently the phenomena is more common in hotel mirrors than at home. So this Friday when I stayed in a Hotel and came out of the shower and saw that the mirror had steamed up I decided to look for the phenomena. At first I noticed next to nothing, but after staring into the mirror for a while, whilst shifting my position in the bathroom I noticed that the higher in the room and the further away from the mirror I got my head the more clearly there was light shining from my eyes. I performed a simple experiment and switched off the light in the bathroom and the light in my eyes disappeared ( as expected). I turned the light on again and took note that there was a single down light above the mirror, very close to the mirror. The "light from my eyes" only occurred when my reflection was in the light cone from the down light. Do you have any idea what causes this Derek? My hypothesis is that the steam droplets on the mirror combined with the mirror acts in a similar way as a retro-reflector or something like that.
"Brontosaurus" ? The silhouettes looked like brachiosaurus (and let's not discuss about the whole apatosaurus thing and the non-existence of brontosaurus)
This sounds amazing. You're basically telling us that humans successfully created new life.How is this not front page news ? I can't believe this was posted 3 months ago and I find out about it now (missed the video on the feed).
this should be everywhere this literally changes everything pertaining to biology medicine life astronomy even prehistory why is this the first im hearing of it this sounds like chem nobel level stuff here so significant it will make more nobel level things happen
I'm reminded of Frank Herbert's "Dune's" Residual Poison: Once the poison was administered (the parallel here being the X and Y base pairs), it must constantly receive the antidote (more X and Y base pairs for replication) or die off...
How are we supposed to find your videos if you're constantly making new hidden channels we only discover by chance? Are you on hiatus , or am I just not finding the new secret channel? Also please dont call DNA "letters" they're made of chemicals. What did they even add? I dont think they took a pen and wrote "X" and "Y" on a chain of molecules. This really doesnt tell us anything. What did they actually do? Its a similar effect to trying personify physics. It creates a less accurate perception of what is. Unconscious matter doing physical reactions. We shouldnt picture our bodies being controlled by a jumble of letters on paper, but a bunch of protons and neutrons in different numbers with some electrons holding them together in different positions. No abstracts like letters are present, no personalities, desires or wills, only physical mechanics of the real world. Some people find reality boring, but I find the what is real to be the most fascinating concept possible!
Free online article on the chemistry of unnatural base pairs: academic.oup.com/nar/article/42/16/10235/2902809/Systematic-exploration-of-a-class-of-hydrophobic
Wow. The possibilities really open up when we start creating our own codons and amino acids to make new proteins that behave in more predictable ways. This creates a pretty cool gateway to designing new drugs and enzymes for ochem reactions. Super cool about the lab safety! This will be exciting going forward to see how this is applied.
+Sciencium Could you do a video on the theory of abiogenesis? Could u also state the gaps that scientists are trying to fill because I WANT TO HELP TOO!! It's so interesting how it rellys basically on fundmental theories of chemistry. And better yet, it's plausible! Please and thank you. If you agree with me give it a thumbs up so that Derek can see this.
I was glad to see Miss Franklin recognized. Is it possible for other amino acids to be used to code genetic information? I ask because of interest for possibilities of life on other planets.
Has this experiment advanced in 4 years? Can the new letters now be used to produce mutations in the modified ecoli? Can it outcompete regular ecoli in the lab?
Now we just need to find some more, 6 seems less than ideal for future DNA computing tech which would seem like a great place to apply synthetic bases like this. Ideally though a power of 2 makes it easier since it inter-operates nicely with binary computing having 8 would simply make each base a 3 bit sequence for example. 16 would be even better it's so familiar to anyone familiar with computer science since it's entire data storage etc would thus be encoded in hex that said octal is pretty well known too.
This type of story always makes me think of the Neosapiens from the Exosquad cartoons. They were artificial organisms that needed to be supplied with a man made amino acid to survive. Good review.
