A swapped genetic code prevents viral infections and gene transfer
- PMID: 36922599
- PMCID: PMC10151025
- DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05824-z
A swapped genetic code prevents viral infections and gene transfer
Abstract
Engineering the genetic code of an organism has been proposed to provide a firewall from natural ecosystems by preventing viral infections and gene transfer1-6. However, numerous viruses and mobile genetic elements encode parts of the translational apparatus7-9, potentially rendering a genetic-code-based firewall ineffective. Here we show that such mobile transfer RNAs (tRNAs) enable gene transfer and allow viral replication in Escherichia coli despite the genome-wide removal of 3 of the 64 codons and the previously essential cognate tRNA and release factor genes. We then establish a genetic firewall by discovering viral tRNAs that provide exceptionally efficient codon reassignment allowing us to develop cells bearing an amino acid-swapped genetic code that reassigns two of the six serine codons to leucine during translation. This amino acid-swapped genetic code renders cells resistant to viral infections by mistranslating viral proteomes and prevents the escape of synthetic genetic information by engineered reliance on serine codons to produce leucine-requiring proteins. As these cells may have a selective advantage over wild organisms due to virus resistance, we also repurpose a third codon to biocontain this virus-resistant host through dependence on an amino acid not found in nature10. Our results may provide the basis for a general strategy to make any organism safely resistant to all natural viruses and prevent genetic information flow into and out of genetically modified organisms.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
Conflict of interest statement
Competing Interests statement
The authors declare competing financial interests. Harvard Medical School has filed a provisional patent application related to this work on which A.N., S.V., and G.M.C. are listed as inventors. M.L., K.C., and F.H. are employed by GenScript USA Inc., but the company had no role in designing or executing experiments. G.M.C. is a founder of the following companies in which he has related financial interests: GRO Biosciences, EnEvolv (Ginkgo Bioworks), and 64x Bio. Other potentially relevant financial interests of G.M.C. are listed at
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Comment in
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Synthetic bacterial genome upgraded for viral defence and biocontainment.Nature. 2023 Mar;615(7953):592-594. doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-00702-0. Nature. 2023. PMID: 36922657 No abstract available.
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Retrofitted E. coli genome confers phage resistance.Nat Biotechnol. 2023 Apr;41(4):470. doi: 10.1038/s41587-023-01764-1. Nat Biotechnol. 2023. PMID: 37069393 No abstract available.
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