Overcoming Challenges in Engineering the Genetic Code

M J Lajoie; D Söll; G M Church

doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2015.09.003

Overcoming Challenges in Engineering the Genetic Code

J Mol Biol. 2016 Feb 27;428(5 Pt B):1004-21. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2015.09.003. Epub 2015 Sep 5.

Authors

M J Lajoie¹, D Söll², G M Church³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Program in Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Electronic address: mlajoie@genetics.med.harvard.edu.
² Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8114, USA.
³ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Abstract

Withstanding 3.5 billion years of genetic drift, the canonical genetic code remains such a fundamental foundation for the complexity of life that it is highly conserved across all three phylogenetic domains. Genome engineering technologies are now making it possible to rationally change the genetic code, offering resistance to viruses, genetic isolation from horizontal gene transfer, and prevention of environmental escape by genetically modified organisms. We discuss the biochemical, genetic, and technological challenges that must be overcome in order to engineer the genetic code.

Keywords: expanded genetic code; genome engineering; genomically recoded organism (GRO).

Overcoming Challenges in Engineering the Genetic Code

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