[ Cheers and applause ]
That guy is a very successful Senator.
He's rich, smart. He's handsome.
He's got it all. And now...
Ah!
...so does someone else.
You see that little cut?
It wasn't an accident.
It was a robbery.
The thief just stole the Senator's DNA.
And it should bring some big bucks on the black market
because the Senator isn't just a hot shot
he's a genetically engineered human being
created from scratch in a lab.
In the future, it'll be hard to tell what is made by God
and what is made by man.
Captions by vitac www.Vitac.Com
captions paid for by discovery communications
the Senator just had his DNA hacked.
The genetic code that makes him who he is
can now be re-engineered or replicated.
Now, clients will pay top dollar
for that prime DNA on the black market.
But buyer beware things are not always as they seem.
There are unintended consequences
to tinkering with evolution.
Humans may have the knowledge to play God with life,
but will we have the same divine wisdom?
In bioengineering labs across the globe,
scientists have harnessed a power
once reserved for the gods
the ability to create life where there was none.
Whatever your beliefs,
a new guiding force is emerging to shape our future
a world where we can bring creatures to life
that once existed only in our imaginations.
Dr. kaku: In the 20th century,
we built structures made out of iron, steel, and concrete.
In the 21st century,
we're gonna transform the world with bioengineering
with structures made out of living tissue, cells
treating them like nuts and bolts
that can be rearranged in different ways.
We're gonna be able to take cells and organisms
and design them to carry out specific tasks.
We are beginning to design life.
Woods: Right now scientists at caltech and Harvard
are re-engineering living tissue
to create biological entities
that could change the definition of life.
Pretty, isn't it?
Just your typical artificial jellyfish,
unless you're on the waiting list for a heart transplant.
Dubbed "Medusoid," This groundbreaking hybrid
of living tissue and synthetic materials
is the first step
towards building a human heart from scratch.
Nawroth: The medusoid at this point
is considered something like a mixture
between a robot and engineered tissue.
Woods: The inspiration for medusoid sprang from
an observation that the pulses
propelling a jellyfish through water
are eerily similar to the pumping of a human heart.
Scientists theorize that if they could
successfully engineer an artificial jellyfish,
they could one day use a similar design
to create a self-powered biological pacemaker
or even a new heart.
But appearances can be deceiving.
Medusoid is 100% jellyfish free.
Nawroth: The two components of the medusoid
are the silicon base and wet, hot cells.
The silicon base is purely synthetic,
whereas the red, hot cells have to be harvested,
at this point, from a real rat.
Woods: In a manner worthy of Dr. Frankenstein,
scientists sculpted medusoid's body out of silicon,
then covered it with muscle cells from a rat's heart.
The cells were genetically pre-programmed
to move in regular contractions.
The hope being,
these contractions would make medusoid pulse and move.
The engineering challenge has been
bringing these cells to life and making them work in unison.
It's a two-step approach.
Nawroth: The way we achieve that
is that we coat this elastic membrane
with a particular protein.
It's called fibronectin.
Woods: Found on the exterior of the heart,
fibronectin aligns the individual cells
into an organized pattern.
With all the pieces in place, there's one more step
breathing life into medusoid with a jolt of electricity.
The medusoid needs an external signal.
We emerged two electrodes into the bath
that provide the electric signal
to trigger the contraction.
Woods: The charge hits the cells,
and like a group of tiny synchronized swimmers,
they contract.
Suddenly, like its sea-dwelling cousins,
medusoid begins to swim.
The small creature's motion
mimics the beating of a human heart,
generating hope for its ultimate goal.
Nawroth: We wanted to re-create the function of pumping,
which a jellyfish performs in a very efficient manner
so that we can, at some point, maybe,
use a more complicated model system like a human heart
and build that as well.
Woods: When that day comes, the rat cells will be replaced
by harvested human stem cells to create a biological match
a spare heart made to order.
But for now, the immediate challenge medusoid faces
is functioning free of its electronic tether.
Nawroth: I think it's not far off
that the medusoid could actually swim on its own.
It's really just a bit of tinkering.
Woods: The implications
of this jellyfish creation swimming under its own power
are enormous.
Will we be looking at a living thing?
Each muscle cell by itself has a lot of the properties
that identify them or categorize them as life.
I think the question is more,
"Do they together form an entity that we can consider alive?"
allhoff: There really is
no widely agreed-upon definition of life.
Scientists and philosophers have disagreed on this
for a long time.
Nawroth: If you look up the definition of "Life,"
it just says a life cannot really be defined,
but usually is agreed on
that it has a certain range of properties
and that includes, for example, reproduction and growth
and adaptation and behaviors,
but it doesn't exclude synthetic components.
I mean, it's a little bit like the definition
of "Consciousness" We can't really define it
because we don't know what it is.
Willard: Within the field of synthetic biology and synthetic genomics,
one can sort of divide up the categories
into little building blocks.
It's the engineer's view, if you will,
of how life is put together.
We're biologists,
we're engineers trying to figure out how life works.
On the other side becomes then the question
once we understand it, how do we use it?
When Mary Shelley wrote the novel, "Frankenstein,"
she wrote about a humanlike creature that was perceived
to be a perversion of nature.
But in the future,
we're gonna be facing similar ethical questions
as we begin the process of designing life.
Uldrich: As we continue to progress down this road,
we have to really think through the implications
of what all of this means.
We are now playing God,
so we better get used to playing that role.
Woods: Tinkering with the parts and pieces of living organisms
may help us build a better world,
but what will we do with the power
to master the process that designed life?
When humans finally have control over evolution,
will we begin to redesign the biological world
one cell at a time?
Are the dishes done?
Yep. All done.
Woods: Who needs a dishwasher?
Those plates are squeaky clean thanks to critters
pre-programmed to eat food and waste.
Bioluminescent organisms light the way.
There are no machines. There's no electricity.
100% organic.
Life designed to spec.
Dr. kaku: Millions of years of evolution have produced animals
with some of the most amazing traits.
Bacteria that can eat pesticides or even nylon.
But what happens if one day we can accelerate evolution
by thousands of times?
We could create creatures
with some of the most amazing traits
animals that serve a purpose.
Woods: Dr. frances Arnold,
a chemical and bioengineering Professor at caltech,
is on a quest to engineer
the next generation of genetic traits.
But she's not waiting around for nature to produce them.
She's forcing evolution's hand by creating mutant genes.
Evolution is the powerful algorithm for biological design.
It's made everything in the biological world.
So, what we do is we use these same processes
that incur in nature, but we speed them up.
Woods: Arnold turns out thousands of generations
of new traits in the time it takes for nature
to make a single generation of mice.
It's evolutionary change
happening over the course of weeks, even days.
She's hoping to discover a new revolutionary variant
of nature's most powerful tools proteins.
Dr. Arnold: I love to play with proteins.
Proteins are the machinery of life.
They do all of the work of living systems.
Proteins allow bacteria to swim, they have little motors,
copy things, catalyze chemical reactions.
They do all of the things that machines do for us.
Woods: But unlike mother nature, Arnold can tap into
the vast diversity of the entire natural world at will.
Sometimes we start with a specific protein
and set of features we want to end up with,
but other times we say,
"What will happen if we recombine this DNA from termites
"And this DNA from bacteria and try to make a new enzyme
that will break down cellulose and make sugars?"
woods: When DNA replicates,
its mutations form a permanent change in the genetic code.
While many of those changes are the source of disease,
for Dr. Arnold, they're an opportunity.
She uses reagents to encourage mutations
and watches as they evolve.
We want to know how they behave.
We want to know what kinds of reactions they catalyze.
Once you start changing with their program,
you're not sure what they can do.
Woods: Playing the role of mother nature,
Arnold fast-forwards through millions of years
of natural selection.
She tests the baby proteins to determine which ones possess
traits the most useful to mankind.
I think of it as my very large sandbox,
and inside this sandbox
are the cures to cancer and the energy crisis.
We make ethanol to make fuels, to make chemicals,
to make food all of these things are possible.
I just have to find them, and that's my challenge.
Woods: The same technology
that creates mutant microbes and yeast cells
could eventually be applied to animals, even humans.
The possibilities are limitless.
Dr. Arnold: That means you're no longer limited to two parents.
You could have 32 parents.
You don't have to recombine cats,
you can recombine monkeys and worms and fungi
and bacteria if you want.
And you can mix all this DNA in the test tube
and explore what kinds of new proteins might come
from these different kingdoms of life.
In the past, evolution has been a way of genetic screening
darwinism, survival of the fittest.
What we are doing, though,
with advancing our genetic technology,
is taking control of the evolutionary process
and making it better.
Dr. kraft: We're at this new era of do-it-yourself biology
D.I.Y. Bio where a teenager in a garage,
for a couple hundred dollars, can have the power
of what used to be
a multi-million dollar molecular biology lab a few years ago.
So, that has great promise,
but also has some potential downsides in terms of security.
Woods: Today in labs around the globe,
humans are trying to improve the process
responsible for creating all living things.
But if we're truly going to give evolution an upgrade,
we'll have to redesign the dominant species
ourselves.
This one's a really popular one right now.
Woman: I really like that blue.
Oh, do you? I prefer the green actually.
Let me try the green.
Honey, let's just do blue. No, let's go with green.
Let's skip that for now.
Let's talk about the teeth.
Now, let's face it
young couples already have enough trouble
designing a color scheme for their living room.
Imagine designing your unborn child.
You see, this began as a way for young couples
to ensure that they had healthy babies,
but as we tinker with our DNA to eliminate disease and disorders,
we may also be on the brink
of directing our own genetic destiny,
bucking natural selection.
So, does that mean that we're designing a super species
or playing a game not meant for mortals?
Dr. kaku: In Greek and Roman mythology,
the gods gave birth
to incredible offspring with divine powers.
However, in the future,
it'll be science, and not mythology,
that allows us to design extraordinary children.
Natural selection will be decommissioned
as we begin the process
of re-creating our genetic heritage.
Woods: Today in the lab of Dr. bernhard zimmermann,
humans have already begun to override natural selection.
Parents looking to protect their unborn children
can sift through and weed out the undesirable parts
of their own genetic make-up.
What I'm really working on is next-generation sequencing.
Woods: Genetic sequencing allows parents
to discover almost everything about the genetic material
they're passing along to their offspring.
It begins by fertilizing an egg in vitro
and letting it divide into multiple embryonic cells.
The cell basically has a complete genome
of the growing human in it
and one copy of every single sequence that there is.
Woods: The scientists can screen each cell's DNA
for genetic conditions,
like down syndrome or huntington's disease.
The key to the process is microarrays
tiny slides that hold DNA probes,
chemically engineered matches
for the genes they're targeting.
Zimmermann: Microarrays,
they basically have a set of probes, DNA sequences,
that are complimentary to the DNA sequences
the couple wants to analyze.
Woods: To screen for the gene
that causes huntington's disease,
the team can create a DNA sequence
that's designed to bind with that particular gene.
The probes are tagged with a luminescent material
that glows when the match is made
and indicates that huntington's is present.
By the intensity of the light
that's measured on the spot on the microarray,
you can determine which sequences are present,
which sequences are present at higher copy numbers,
and which sequences are not present.
Woods: If a bad gene is detected in a cell,
the geneticist can eliminate it from the pool.
What's left are only healthy cells that can be harvested
and reimplanted into the womb.
The parents can rest assured
they haven't passed along any genetic disorder.
And zimmermann is now working on a non-invasive way
to pull the child's DNA directly from the mother's blood.
But soon, parents will be able to sift through
just about any trait they wish to erase
from their genetic history.
Dr. kaku: The baby doctors of the future
will be quite different from the ob-gyns of today.
They'll be biochemists and engineers.
They'll be able to reshape the human race.
They'll be able to create the best of the best.
Eventually, we'll be able to weed out bad traits,
like acne or allergies,
but perhaps even depression or addiction.
Woods: But in the end,
this process can only eliminate dangerous or undesirable genes,
and the child is limited
to the genetic make-up of his parents.
To have full control of our genetic destiny,
we need to tap into the vast array of human genetic material,
choose whatever genes we desire,
and implant them directly into embryos.
We need the ability to reinvent our genetic code at will.
At Duke university, Dr. Charles gersbach
has found a way to alter DNA with pinpoint accuracy.
Up until recently, the only methods
that you had to deliver new genes into cells
had no control over where those genes went
within the human genome.
There were many unforeseen negative consequences
to this approach.
Woods: But with a technique called genome editing,
humans are in the driver's seat of our own evolution.
Dr. gersbach: What we're looking at
is the genetic sequence that we're interested in modifying.
With the genome editing technology,
we really have the ability to either add, remove,
or exchange DNA at any site in the genome
that we're interested in.
And it's a very simple concept
if you have a genetic disease, you can just replace it
with a healthy copy of the defective gene.
Woods: Gersbach and his team
achieve this by creating synthetic enzymes.
They're made up of proteins,
engineered to attach themselves to targeted sites.
Ousterout: So, what we've basically done is
we've taken our recipe
and we've put the DNA blocks together
according to that recipe
and now this will assemble them into the final product.
Woods: That final product
enzymes that can cut and remove or alter the selected DNA.
But getting them into the cell
requires a microscopic trojan horse.
Anytime that you want to add or exchange genetic material
inside of a cell, you need to find a way
to deliver that genetic material across the barriers,
like the cell membrane and the nuclear membrane.
We're taking viruses, we remove
all of the disease-causing parts of the virus,
and replace them with genes that can cure disease.
Woods: Safely inside the nucleus,
the enzyme can find its target and replace the offending DNA.
And what we see just by roughly inspecting the data
that we've actually managed to introduce
highly efficient corrections to this population of cells
very easily using our designer enzymes.
Ideally, the development of these technologies
is going to lead to a world
where we don't have to worry about hereditary disease
and we don't have to observe sick children
that we're utterly unable to help,
but it could also be used for augmentation
or enhancing certain human traits.
Woods: This could be a world where your baby comes
with a health guarantee.
Allhoff: If it's to edit out disease,
that's got to be okay.
But if it's to change eye color or to change body-fat percentage
or propensities toward these things,
then maybe it starts to look a little trickier.
Woods: If you hated the fact
that your parents made you get a stupid haircut,
wait until they're deciding your skin color,
your height, or your figure.
Willard: When do we cross the line
and which kinds of lines are we willing to cross
in moving us forward as either individuals
or a society or as a species?
Woods: As the gene pool is homogenized with nicer eyes
and straighter teeth, something vital is lost
diversity, the key to species surviving.
Playing around with genetic codes is a very dangerous field.
If we get rid of that particular characteristic,
have we, as a society, suddenly lost
some of our human diversity
diversity that was in fact important,
but we just were too arrogant to see it?
Smart: We've seen societies, like maoist China,
where harmony and unity is the primary objective.
These are abject failures, these societies.
There's far too little diversity in them and they can't survive.
We don't know the downstream effects
of all of those sort of manipulations.
General safety might dictate
that we restrict parents' ability
to make those sorts of decisions,
at least until we have more information.
Woods: But even if certain genetic editing were banned,
the technology could be difficult to stop.
After all, a parent's desire
to give her children every advantage
is hardwired by evolution.
Willard: It could change everything.
It comes down to a philosophical perspective.
Either the genome is a product of evolution,
we change it only when we need to save lives and advance lives,
or it's a free-for-all, and we simply say we're the ones
who figured out how to manipulate the genomes,
so in fact, that is our darwinian advantage.
Woods: By tapping into the vast human gene pool,
from the traits of billions of individuals around the world,
we will be drafting the blueprint
for the future of humanity.
It's a blueprint possessing features beyond our imagination
because our DNA has a secret a remnant of our past
that will allow us to resurrect genes once lost to time.
Woods: A game of hide-and-seek would be very different
if you were playing with cro-magnon man.
You see, our ancestors
had some pretty impressive survival skills,
like a sense of smell
that would rival that of a bloodhound.
But as we evolved, those traits faded away,
just like overall body hair and knuckle dragging.
Oh, man, buddy. You're good.
While those traits are gone,
the genetic traces are still there.
Less than 2% of our DNA contains coding genes.
The rest is genomic dark matter whose function is unclear.
This mysterious material could hold a treasure trove
of extinct genetic traits that may become relevant once again.
Dr. kuka: We share about 85% of our genes with the zebrafish.
So, in principle, there's no scientific reason
why we can't have gills.
People can be engineered, perhaps, to live in the oceans.
Woods: Today that bizarre scenario is becoming a reality
thanks to a research team at Montana state university.
They're figuring out how we can customize our DNA
by raiding our genetic dark matter for long-lost traits.
Their goal is to awaken the dormant genes of a chicken
to express the traits of its ancient ancestor
a dinosaur.
Blackwell: Instead of trying to make a dinosaur,
we're reverse-engineering the chicken
to make it look like a dinosaur.
A chickenosaurus or a dino-chicken.
Woods: To paleontologist Jack horner,
this is the first step in a lifelong dream
a chance to resurrect and re-create biological traits
that have been dormant for eons.
I have always wanted to have a dinosaur.
I've always thought it'd be really cool
if we could just have one,
and now, I think we've realized the fact that we actually could.
Woods: Jack is a true pioneer
first man to find dinosaur eggs in the Western hemisphere,
first to actually examine a dinosaur embryo,
and he's one of the first
to try to recover dino DNA from fossils.
We originally attempted to extract DNA from a dinosaur,
and we were able to get soft tissues, proteins,
but unfortunately, no DNA.
Woods: Failing to find dino DNA
pushed Jack to a radical new idea.
If the original genetic material is gone,
maybe he could use the DNA of their descendents instead.
The easiest way that we could make an animal
that looks sort of like a dinosaur
is to use these things we call atavisms,
and basically they're ancestral characteristics.
All birds have a common ancestor
and that common ancestor is a dinosaur.
There was a big extinction of them
that took out what we called the non-avian dinosaurs,
but the avian dinosaurs birds are still with us.
Woods: In every animal's DNA, there are inactive genes.
Some contain codes for lost traits
that have been hidden by thousands of years of mutation,
like the body fur mankind shed long ago.
But those transformations took time
and thousands of complex interactions.
So, giving a chickenosaurus back its dino-tail
is a lot more complicated than flipping an on/off switch.
Rashid: Basically we all start off with tails,
and what happens as embryos, is you actually grow a tail,
and then that tail degenerates back
if you're a creature that doesn't have a tail.
So, what we're gonna try to do, initially,
is to stop this process of degeneration
and see if that will actually
maintain that tail structure in the chicken.
Woods: But this only ensures
that the tail's basic structure survives.
It's down to another gene, called a promoter,
to create a tail that actually resembles that of a dinosaur's.
If Jack and his team
can combine the right concoction of genes,
they may be able to bring the dinosaurs back
one trait at a time.
But the real payoff is using the same manipulation on humans.
Wallach: If you introduce dinosaurs into the modern world
or if we create a new tribe of neanderthals,
are we doing them any favor?
Or is there some real purpose
that will serve the betterment of humanity
in the process of creating them?
Rahid: If we can grow a tail,
maybe we could help someone who has an injury
maybe paralysis victims.
Allhoff: Research that would reactivate some of those genes,
potentially could figure out
important genes that went dormant
and could turn them back on,
but then we would wonder if those genes were important,
why did they go dormant in the first place?
If we had access to every single genetic trait that ever existed
on the planet earth, where would we stop?
On one hand, we could change
the genetic destiny of the entire species,
but on the other hand, at the individual level,
we can make all of us unique hybrids.
Woods: Who knows how far scientists or genetic hackers
can push the limits of our species.
Humans that can smell like a bloodhound, see like an owl,
or breathe underwater thanks to modified gills.
But the core of creation is intelligence
the ability to engineer a living, thinking mind
is the ultimate in bio-design intervention.
But what if we could make a mind as small as a molecule
or as fluid as water,
and what if those minds
could infuse inanimate objects with reason?
Woods: The living, thinking mind
may be the most complex and impressive creation
in all of nature.
But what if a brain could take on a radically different form?
What if it were possible to make a mind out of liquid
and pour it into a glass, make it into a table,
or plaster it into the walls?
Imagine being surrounded by walls
that not only had eyes, but also a memory.
Wallach: How is a memory recorded
in a molecular structure?
How do organic substances give rise to the mental states?
It's one of the great mysteries of science.
Woods: Learning how molecules remember
is the focus of Dr. Lulu qian and her team
at a lab in Southern California.
Okay, now we have the DNA signature ready.
Every memory you have
the joys, the triumphs, the pains
are encoded in neurons.
But exactly how a memory is stored
in a bundle of brain cells is still a mystery.
That's why qian is reengineering a system for biological memory.
It could lead to the creation of an intelligent,
self-aware breed of molecules.
In human history,
a lot of different computing substrate have been used,
such as Springs and gears,
and then to vacuum tubes, and now to transistors.
But no one has used encomputing substrate
as wet and squishy and small as molecules.
Woods: A liquid mind could be placed almost anywhere
into the walls,
into machines to diagnose mechanical failures,
or into the cells of our bodies to diagnose biological wounds.
The secret is the ability to store information
at the molecular level inside our DNA.
These building blocks of life
are also nature's data storage system.
DNA stores information by a very simple chemical code
where the order of four different chemicals
serves as the storage of the information,
but that information could be used to store anything,
just like zeros and ones are used
to store information on a computer.
Woods: Qian's computer uses DNA molecules
that she designed herself.
She uses unpaired DNA strands
that transmit the input and output of information.
So, in our system,
we have those double strands DNA partially paired
and have some unpaired parts sticking out like tails.
Then a single strand can first stick to the tail,
and if their sequences match,
the single strand will zip itself up
to one of the strands in the double helix,
while displacing another strand.
Woods: Information is passed
along the cascade of DNA molecules.
The entire system of DNA strands
is capable of recognizing patterns
and filling in missing information.
It has the memory capacity of four neurons.
That may not sound like much
to those of us with 100 billion neurons,
but this biological computer is already advanced enough
to play a game with humans.
We designed a fun game called "Guess your mind."
the human player will think of a scientist
choosing from these four
and then try to answer some of these four questions.
Woods: Qian challenges her brain soup
by providing only one answer to the set of four questions.
Each answer is represented
by patterns of DNA that are recognized by the liquid mind.
It also knows when parts of those patterns are missing.
So, with only one answer,
the mind can fill in the missing data
and guess the correct scientist.
Qian waits as it processes,
and an added florescent element will signal the DNA's answer.
Dr. qian: So, we'll be able to see the plots looking like that.
In some of the channels, the florescent signal will go high,
looking like this one or that one.
The answer to the second question should be no.
Woods: The florescent signals reveal that the DNA
has filled in the answers to the other three questions,
which fit only one scientist.
The answer I was thinking was Santiago Ramon y cajal,
so the DNA sociative memory made the correct guess.
Woods: They tested dozens of different answer combinations
and every single time,
the artificial neurons came up with the right answer.
If you create, let's say a DNA computer,
and put that inside individual cells,
it would be able to collect information
from its own environment
and then try to regulate the cell's behavior.
The most powerful capability of neural network
is the capability to learn.
This is where I plan to take my research to.
Woods: If qian can create a soup of DNA proteins that thinks,
perhaps any material can be given these same properties
of organic intelligence,
but is that artificial, organic mind a conscious being?
Allhoff: If you can make a brain, have you created a person?
Have you created someone with moral status?
So, replicating the human brain
raises a host of not just ethical,
but also philosophical questions.
I think it's kind of one of the big mysteries
that there really is something like a soul.
It's easy for some scientists to argue,
"No, there is nothing,"
that all of life is reduced to biochemistry."
and I think we're getting into an area
where a little humility on our part is in order.
Woods: When we can whip up
a living, thinking being in a glass,
we will be master manipulators of nature.
So, what then could we create or unleash
when we cut nature out of the equation altogether?
Woods: Well, looks like our hacker's
taking up a new, more dangerous trade
making and selling XNA,
an artificial chemical soup that can replace DNA.
It's stronger, more durable,
and unbound by the shackles of nature.
Now, no one knows how volatile
these new organic building blocks will be.
But one thing's for certain
in the wrong hands, they'll be devastating.
And the first victim could be faith.
After all, who needs God when you can do his job for him?
Dr. kaku: Imagine creating a new organism
at an entirely fundamental level.
Something that could consume carbon dioxide,
survive in harsh weather,
live in different hostile chemical environments,
even on the planet Mars.
We could be creating an entirely new branch of life.
Woods: Welcome to genesis 2.0 the origin of life...Again.
That might sound like heresy,
but like it or not, the patent on life could become ours.
At the bio-design institute in tempe, Arizona,
Dr. John chaput and his team have rewritten the rules
that governed life on earth for three and a half billion years.
They've turned inorganic matter
into a molecule that can replicate itself.
Dr. chaput: All of life is based on
a nucleic-acid polymer with ribose as its sugar,
or deoxyribose in the case of DNA, but why is that?
The basic research question that we're interested in is
are there other genetic materials
that could function equally as well, and if so,
what are those materials and what do they look like?
Woods: Chaput responded with a shocking, little molecule
he designed from synthetic materials.
Dr. chaput: XNA's completely alien.
It's completely foreign.
It's not found in any of our cells.
There are no enzymes inside our cells that recognize it, and so,
any type of work on XNA has to be done in the laboratory.
Woods: "Xeno" Is Greek for "Foreign" Or "Alien."
translation proceed at your own risk.
The process begins
by engineering a synthetic sugar, the scaffolding of XNA.
Dr. chaput: Here we have my student, Richard,
who is taking our XNA building blocks,
which at this point, are really just a powder.
The building blocks of XNA,
like its counterparts DNA and rna
are composed of a nucleic base, phosphates,
and a sugar molecule.
It's this simple sugar molecule that gives each block its shape,
and that spells the difference between DNA and XNA.
So, here we have the classic Watson-crick DNA double helix.
We've got the genetic letters in the middle,
which form the Watson-crick base spheres,
and then on the outside, we have the molecular framework
that holds this molecule together,
which really consists of repeating sugars
connected by phosphates.
Now, with XNA, what we did is
we substituted this naturally occurring sugar here
for a synthetic, unnatural sugar.
Woods: That tiny change in sugars
creates an entirely new basis for life.
And these building blocks
may be stronger and more durable than DNA.
XNA is actually much more stable than DNA
in terms of its resistance to certain enzymes,
because it's a completely unnatural backbone.
Woods: The same enzymes responsible
for catalyzing replication in DNA also break it down,
so with no natural enemies,
it could last significantly longer.
This could mean the creation of truly immortal life forms.
Organisms can be designed to live in space,
in toxic environments, or in our own bodies for generations.
Dr. chaput: We discovered
that by doing directed evolution experiments
directly on XNA molecules.
It could retain its genetic information
through iterative rounds of selection and amplification.
Woods: XNA was not only replicating,
it was passing down genetic information
to the next generation, like a parent to a child.
Evolution has begun all over again.
If something can evolve, then most likely it will evolve.
If XNA is allowed to reproduce,
then perhaps it could create a new tree of life.
And then what happens if XNA turns out
to be stronger than our DNA?
What happens when it blends with our DNA?
There's an interesting parallel between XNA
and say, genetically modified crops.
If we have oranges that are genetically modified,
we look at them as somehow standing outside of nature
and not being real oranges.
Maybe people, if you meet somebody in the shopping mall,
you want to see a label
knowing whether they have external DNA or XNA.
Woods: The more it's regulated,
the more it would go underground,
where D.I.Y. Biologists could create strands
of nearly indestructible life.
It could unleash an evolutionary monster,
but our own belief system may be at risk as well.
Hughes: Well, there are a lot of ways
in which our growing scientific understanding of the world
has decentered the grandiose illusion
that the universe was created for us
and that we're the center of it.
We were the product of a random walk of mammals.
We don't necessarily have a divinely sanctioned future.
This gives us the responsibility to take control of our destiny.
Woods: For billions of years, life on the blue planet
has been guided by the invisible hand of evolution.
Now a new world is coming
where we can create novel creatures from living cells,
awaken sleeping genes, control evolution,
and engineer a brand-new chemistry for life.
In other words,
when technology catches up to God
and makes evolution obsolete, we are in uncharted waters.
Now the question is
can we handle the most seismic power in the cosmos
or will future generations learn the hard way
how playing God was a devastating mistake?