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All natural life uses the same four bases in its DNA: A paired with T and C paired with G. Scientists worked on adding more bases. Just putting them into DNA is not hard, the challenging part is to keep them there: They should not get removed/replaced during reproduction. This has now been achieved. They put a new set of base pairs (X/Y) in E. coli and added some other tools to make it stable in a cell line, including CRISPR-Cas9 that looks for sequences without the X/Y and kills those cells. The newly added bases were still there after 60 reproduction cycles.
A new base pair makes it easier to introduce completely new functions, as it doesn't encode anything in the original cell - every interpretation of it is more controlled.
Source: Press release
A new base pair makes it easier to introduce completely new functions, as it doesn't encode anything in the original cell - every interpretation of it is more controlled.
Source: Press release