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Living systems are currently limited to 20 different ‘building blocks’ – but could we supplement them with new building materials?
The Nobel prize in 2020 was awarded for CRISPR gene editing, a technology that permits genetic engineering of living systems to produce proteins with altered functions. This transformative technology is currently being developed for a range of applications including treating genetic disease and even food production.
The editing of proteins is still however limited to choices amongst the 20 building blocks (amino acids) that life has used for billions of years.
Chemist turned synthetic biologist Kim Liu asks: Can we use more building blocks than the 20 that already exist? Instead of only editing the genetic code, could we also expand it with other unnatural amino acids? If so, we can both unlock potentially endless new proteins with functions that nature herself currently cannot access, and also explore the possibility of even producing polymers that would constitute new materials.
