Science & Environment

Animal's genetic code redesigned

Nematode worm
Image caption The artificial protein contains a dye that glows cherry red under UV light



One expert the BBC spoke to agrees, saying the technique would be seized upon by "the entire biology community".


The worms - from the species Caenorhabditis elegans - are 1mm long, with just a thousand cells in their transparent bodies.


Genes are the DNA blueprints that enable living organisms to construct their biological machinery, protein molecules, out of strings of simpler building blocks called amino acids.


Expanded palette


Dr Chin of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology (where Francis Crick and James Watson first cracked the structure of DNA) describes the technique as "potentially transformational": designer proteins could be created that are entirely under the researchers' control.

The development builds on techniques first developed at the Scripps Research Institute, in La Jolla, US, where Dr Chin worked 10 years ago.

The genetic code comes in four DNA letters, A,C,G and T; the genetic machinery reads it in words three letters long, called codons, which stand for the individual amino acid blocks to be built into a growing protein.


Jonathan Hodgkin, professor of genetics at Oxford University, welcomes the new development, saying it "creates exciting new opportunities for research on C. elegans".

New tricks

Closer to home, Dr Mario de Bono, an expert on C elegans, who is also at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, predicts "this sort of news travels like wildfire" among research biologists, adding that the method could be applied to a wide range of animals.



Indeed, the two are planning to collaborate on a detailed study of neural cells in the nematode brain, aiming to activate or deactivate individual neurons in precise ways with tiny laser flashes.

Dr Chin rather modestly admits he's "incredibly pleased" to have succeeded in a project he had avoided until a year and a half ago, for fear that other well-established competitors would get there quicker.

On the other hand, Dr de Bono compares the invention with the Nobel-prize winning work on green fluorescent protein, which are now part of the standard kit in biology labs across the world.

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