Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute in California are closer to developing artificial life after producing a living organism that combines both natural and artificial DNA.
The group has been able to create a synthetic form of E.coli that could take instruction from a hybrid genetic alphabet, called X and Y, to make proteins.
The discovery, published in the journal Nature on 29 November, adds to the wider efforts of scientists to create designer proteins that will have a variety of uses from medicines to materials.
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