Translating DNA into synthetic molecules.

David R Liu

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020223

Abstract

Translating DNA into synthetic molecules.

Highlights

At some time almost 4 billion years ago, nature likely was faced with a chemical dilemma
While proteins and nucleic acids can be manipulated using powerful molecular biology techniques that enable their directed evolution, the size, fragility, and relatively limited functional group diversity of biological macromolecules make them poorly suited for solving many problems in the chemical sciences
The latter process uses DNA to record the history of a series of chemical reactions by cosynthesizing a portion of a DNA oligonucleotide during each step of a molecule’s solidphase synthesis

Summary

Introduction

At some time almost 4 billion years ago, nature likely was faced with a chemical dilemma. Researchers would like to apply evolution-based approaches to the discovery of functional synthetic, rather than biological, molecules.

Results

Conclusion