Writing genetic code 2.0 (Image: Laguna Design/SPL)

Editorial: The scary business of tinkering with life

A TOTALLY new genetic code has been devised, along with machinery that could make it a biological reality. It’s an advance that means living cells could be persuaded to make proteins with properties that have never been seen in the natural world.

More extraordinary still, it could eventually lead to the creation of new or “improved” life forms that incorporate these materials in their tissue – possibly even organisms with bulletproof bodies.

In all existing life forms, the cell’s protein-making machinery reads the four chemical “letters” …