Major synthetic life breakthrough as scientists make the first artificial enzymes

For the first time, researchers have made synthetic enzymes – the vital ingredients needed for life – from artificial genetic material that does not exist outside the laboratory. The milestone could soon lead to new ways of developing drugs and medical treatments.

The findings are the latest in the field of synthetic biology, which attempts to create new biological molecules and even novel life-forms capable of carrying out a range of important medical and industrial functions, from manufacturing pharmaceuticals to detoxifying polluted land.

“Synthetic biology is delivering some truly amazing advances that promise to change the way we understand and treat disease,” said Professor Patrick Maxwell, chair of the cellular medicine board of the Medical Research Council (MRC), which funded the study.

“The UK excels in this field and this latest advance offers the tantalising prospect of using designer biological parts as a starting point for an entirely new class of therapies and diagnostic tools that are more effective and have a longer shelf-life,” Professor Maxwell said.

The discovery, by scientists at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, also widens the scope for finding extraterrestrial life-forms on other planets based on completely different biochemistry to that used by life on Earth.

“When we look for life elsewhere, either in the Solar System or on exoplanets beyond, this discovery means that we may have to widen the boundaries of the conditions where we think life may exist,” said Philipp Holliger, who led the MRC research team.

“It expands the chemical range that one can envisage life living in. It would potentially widen the number of exoplanets that one could consider would be hospitable for some form of life,” Dr Holliger said.

Alex Taylor, the lead author of the study, said: “The [discovery] raises the possibility that, if there is life on other planets, it may have sprung up from an entirely different set of molecules, and it widens the possible number of planets that might be able to host life.”

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