Nature always is primed with surprises - astounding, amazing or amusing! Scientists, all armed to come up with newer bewilderments each day, are yet again been surprised by a ‘bacterial nature’ - the microscopic life are found to employ a type of DNA modification never ever seen in nature.
For scientists, it has always been possible to modify synthetic oligonucleotides (short strands of DNA) in the lab — by adding sulfur to the sugar-phosphate DNA backbone as a phosphorothioate, in a bid to make them DNA-resistant to nucleases.
Such modifications are common in the process of making enzymes that snip DNA in certain locations, to develop gene and antisense therapies for human diseases. But, what surprises the scientists is the bacteria’s ability to make the same modification all on their own!
Leading the research, Peter Dedon, professor of biological engineering said,
It turns out that nature has been using phosphorothioate modifications of DNA all along, and we just didn’t know about it... To find that bacteria do it naturally opens up a whole new set of issues to deal with. What is it doing? Why would bacteria conserve this system which requires five enzymes, each with different co-factors?
But, if this natural modification system will serve to protect against foreign (unmodified) DNA, or help assist in DNA transcription or replication, is yet to be seen.
