This TED Talk features chemist and synthetic biologist Floyd E. Romsberg, recorded live at TED

2018.

All life, every living thing ever, has been built according to the information in DNA.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that just as the English language is made up of alphabetic letters that, when

combined into words, allow me to tell you the story I'm going to tell you today.

DNA is made up of genetic letters that, when combined into genes, allow cells to produce

proteins, strings of amino acids that fold up into complex structures, that perform the functions

that allow a cell to do what it does,

to tell its stories. The English alphabet has 26 letters, and the genetic alphabet has four.

They're pretty famous, maybe you've heard of them. They're often just referred to as G, C, A, and T.

But it's remarkable that all the diversity of life is the result of four genetic letters.

Imagine what it would be like if the English alphabet had four letters.

What sort of stories would you be able to tell?

What if the genetic alphabet had more letters?

Would life with more letters be able to tell different stories,

maybe even more interesting ones?

In 1999, my lab at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California,

started working on this question with the goal of creating living organisms

with DNA made up of a six-letter genetic alphabet.

The four natural letters plus two additional new man-made letters.

Such an organism would be the first radically altered form of life ever created.

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