Deadly DNA
New Scientist has a fascinating article about an ongoing search for deadly DNA sequences. The theory is that some sequences of DNA will have a deadly structure that will make the incompatible with life (each different DNA sequence coils into a unique 3D shape according to the laws of physics). The really neat part is that they’re looking for these DNA sequences by scanning published genome libraries and looking for DNA sequences that don’t appear in any life.
So far over 60,000 sequences of length 15 have been found that are not located in the genomes of any organisms (deciding to start the search at length 15 seems somewhat arbitrary). Doubtless some of these are simply by chance; there are 2^30 possible sequences of length 15, and so it is rather unlikely that all of them would show up in DNA. But some of it could be more than chance. Maybe some of these sequences really are deadly, by binding to some molecule associated with essential cellular machinery?
The ethical question, I suppose, is what do you do if some of these sequences really are deadly? Do you publish the results? Do you use them for military purposes? If these DNA molecules get loose, would that be much more lethal than even Polonium 210 or prions?
