Most Extensive Reengineering of an Organism’s Genetic Code Now Complete

scientificamerican.com

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...

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.

Also maybe they didn't watch/read Jurassic Park: http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Lysine_contingency

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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