人造碱基与人工合成生命

Artificial Base and Synthetic Life

文章就人造碱基及相关人工合成生命领域内的代表性研究成果进行了全景式综述,着重介绍了氢键互补及疏水性两种最为主要的人造碱基对,探讨了具有里程碑意义的六核酸分子人工合成生命及其对合成生物学未来发展的影响,简单综述了人造碱基在DNA检测诊断试剂盒等方面的成功应用实例。最后对这一研究领域的前景和面临的挑战进行了展望。

＂Artificial Base＂ is also known as ＂Expanded Genetic Alphabets＂. Through modifying normal bases, it is designed to achieve the function of native nucleic acid, which was first introduced about thirty years ago. In 2014, Nature reported a semi-synthetic Escherichia coli, whose genome contains a pair of unnatural base pair which can be stably propagated in the semi-synthetic bacterium. This landmark work was selected as one of the top ten breakthroughs of 2014 by the Science journal. Here, we panoramically review the representative achievements in the field of artificial base and synthetic life, particularly two leading artificial base pairs respectively with alternative hydrogen bonding pattern and hydrophobic shape complementation pattern. Moreover, we discuss the significant work regarding the synthetic living system with six- letter nucleotides and its effect on future developments of synthetic biology. The successful applications of diagnostic kit for DNA test and other cases are also introduced. Finally, we discuss the further work required to this field and the challenges.