DNA is a molecule that has been crucial for life since its appearance. Basically, it works as an instructions manual that has all the information for living beings to function, interact, and evolve. Its long history of million years of evolution has made DNA a deeply complex molecule. There are many things we can list if we think of the importance of DNA; in this blog post, we show you some of them that had been rapidly evolving within recent years.
Besides an instruction manual, we can also see the DNA as a history book. We can use it to locate ancestral new genes and understand how all the species have evolved to become what they are nowadays by analyzing and comparing their TNA sequences we can not only know at which points of time they diverge, but also, we can understand which events led to the exposition and we can also have insights about species that approved and became extinct and how a single species can have a lot of differences depending on the environment geographical location and many others in the case of the human beings we can understand how we have traveled why we have differences depending on the countries
With the advances in biotechnology, we have been able to understand an organism’s genome as a map of the different pieces of a device and use that information to exchange parts between systems. This is called bioengineering, where we call organisms or their functional parts biological machines. A biological machine can be used to solve problems by designing them to do activities such as: removing pollutants from the environment, producing clean energy, creating new biomaterials, or even
DNA is written in a language that we call genetic code. Just as other languages, it has its own rules, and we can translate from one language to another. Imagine a USB drive. We can keep memories, important documents, or even movies on that small device that we can keep in a pocket. Now imagine storing information like that but instead of using a binary code (the one that computers understand), we could use genetic code! Although this may sound crazy, it is totally possible and has been done. DNA as a storage method has many advantages over traditional informatics, as it is a molecule with millions of years of evolution capable of self-correcting and whose information can be kept over many generations of individuals without changes or risk of loss. With that objective in mind, scientists from Harvard University “programmed” a bacteria to save… a GIF on its DNA!
Have you ever thought of the risks of using DNA? The biosafety and biosecurity aspect of scientific research is one of the most important things to take into consideration. Biotechnology, just as any other technological advance has a negative side that has been studied by scientists to try to understand its potential risks and misuses. Historically, we have gone from preventing pathogenic genes to be used to create biological weapons to develop more sophisticated technologies. As DNA can be used as a storage device, it is also possible to include computational viruses in the genetic code! Although this may sound like a sci-fi movie, laboratories that carry out sequentation processes now need to be prepared to avoid cyber-biotechnological threats.
Do you want to learn more? Check our past articles about more interesting facts about DNA and Synthetic Biology.
