Reducing Redundancy of Genetic Code

 A recent genetic discovery made by scientists in Cambridge could allow scientists to significantly cut down the amount of unneeded and repeating code that we often see in a gene. The study focuses in on one of the most studied bacteria in history, E. Coli. and its genetic code. Redundancy in a gene refers to different codons that all code for the same amino acid. For example, there are six different codons that all code for the amino acid Leucine. Because of this, we see hundreds of different combinations in each protein in different parts of the code that all code for the same amino acid. Scientists have begun to investigate this bloat, and are actively looking for ways to reduce it. In E. Coli, they started off by reducing the number of Serine codons from 6 to just 2 without it harming the bacteria. After the success of this experiment, they went even further, attempting to further build upon that reduction. However, doing this would mean they would have to remove or alter over 5 times more codons than what they removed in the original reduction. After a long period of trial and error, in which some changes destroyed the entire bacteria, scientists realized their dream, and Syn57, although extremely weak, was created.

The main benefits highlighted in the article are that Syn57 could potentially help create new drugs, useful molecules, or even combat against genetically engineered microbes released in the environment. The reason Syn57 could be useful in the fight against engineered microbes is due to the unnatural code being unreadable to the microbes, rendering their effects useless. If true, Syn57 can potentially open the door for other treatments of the same kind, thus being able to render any dangerous viruses or microbes ineffective. While still very early in this field, and any kind of real medical impact won't be anytime soon, the potential something like that holds is immeasurable and worth keeping tabs on. If we can find a way to make a gene or bacteria impossible for a foreign danger to read, there could be major positive impacts on our health as a society.