Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast.

Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

All life on Earth rests on the same foundation,

a four-letter genetic alphabet spelling out a

repertoire of three-letter words that specify 20 amino acids. But it turns out that the DNA of

some viruses doesn't use the same four nucleotide bases as other life. That's next.

Music nucleotide bases as other life. That's next. Quantum Magazine is an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simon's Foundation

to enhance public understanding of science.

The components of DNA and the molecules that interpret them are basic building blocks.

They lie at biology's core.

Floyd Romsberg is a synthetic biologist at the pharmaceutical company, Sinoffi.

It's hard to imagine something more fundamental as the mechanism of how we store information.

Yet, life's foundational biochemistry can be full of surprises. A few decades ago, researchers found viruses that had swapped one of the four bases in their DNA for a novel fifth one.

Now, in a trio of papers published in science in April, three teams have identified dozens of other viruses that make this same

swap. They've also found the mechanisms that make it possible. Here's Romsberg again.

The genetic alphabet's probably not as rigid or fixed as we thought.

Anything that sort of satisfies a set of sort of chemical criteria might work. And, you know,

if this can work for the genetic alphabet, then that's pretty exciting and interesting.

The discoveries raise the thought-provoking possibility that this kind of fundamental genomic change

could be much more widespread and important in biology than anyone imagined.

I think it really sort of speaks to an adaptability of the genetic alphabet.

...