Published July 22, 2011

| FoxNews.com



An illustration of the double-helix structure of a strand of DNA.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/22/dna-discovery-human-soup-gets-more-complex/#ixzz1Sxkc89Sp

The human recipe just got complicated: It turns out there are more ingredients in us than we thought.

In high school science, we were taught of the four basic units that make up DNA -- adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. When scientists talk of DNA sequencing, it's written as strings of these units: ATCGGTGA, and so on.

In recent years, scientists expanded that list of nucleotides from four to six. And in a study published online in the most recent issue of Science magazine, researchers from the University of North Carolina School's medical school have discovered the seventh and eight bases of DNA.

But the meaning of this extra ingredient in the alphabet soup that makes us who we are isn't as simple as A, B, C.

"Before we can grasp the magnitude of this discovery, we have to figure out the function of these new bases," said Yi Zhang, biochemistry and biophysics professor at UNC.'s Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Zhang arrived at his discovery by playing around with the chemical makeup of the base cytosine; by adding a new chemical tag -- called a methyl group -- to the base it became those fifth and sixth units. This process, called methylation,causes the DNA's double helix to fold even tighter upon itself.

Demethylation describes the removal of a chemical group from a molecule, a process that led to the new 7th and 8th units -- they've been given the ugly names 5-formylcytosine and 5 carboxylcytosine. (The fifth base -- 5 methylC -- and the sixth base -- 5 hydroxymethylC -- have equally ungainly names, to be fair.)

"These bases represent an intermediate state in the demethylation process," he explained.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/22/dna-discovery-human-soup-gets-more-complex/#ixzz1Sxkn9znm

Just when you thought they had everything figured out............

Give it another 50 years and they will be able to CHANGE the DNA sequence while you are alive, and almost instantly..
Only for those that need FIXING at birth to FIX "abnormalities"..

Give it another 50 years and they will be able to CHANGE the DNA sequence while you are alive, and almost instantly..
Only for those that need FIXING at birth to FIX "abnormalities"..

There already is "gene therapy" for some time now, but on a limited basis.
That said, it is highly unlikely that there will be a cure all proceedure for many conditions, even at or just prior to birth. My deformed spinal column is possibly inherited, but how that 3rd Lumbar vertebrae could be put back into line/straightened is not a priority compared to some other afflictions. I have lived a mostly normal existence, in spite of that anomaly, and messing with it would be more of a risk than ignoring it, especially at my age. But in the words of the PhD Neurologist Professor, "you have been extremely lucky"! [They did not find the near by horse shoes up you know where!]

Obtuser--did you catch "Cracking the Ocean Code" showing Ventner finding millions of new dna code strings as he sampled the oceans on a long sample tour?  It is about 3-4 years old but still seems cutting edge.

I assume those new coding bases are in the "junk" dna or junk material that turn out to be gene regulators---which is so often done by inhibiting one gene from expressing itself over another?  Interesting indirect way to do things.  Why would that be the plan for so many things?

Then one news feeder had a recent article on a lab in England creating 100's of human/animal combination proto cells.  I didn't read those articles.  Waiting for the commercial application.

The POWER of gene manipulation/creation.  We've only just begun.

The future is so bright, I'm going to have modified eyeballs.

 Unfortuneately, no. Was not aware of it.
Modified ocular organs= DROLL