Lamia S Alghannam

The Catholic University of America
Author    Correspondence author
Genomics and Applied Biology, 2016, Vol. 7, No. 2   
Received: 25 Feb., 2016    Accepted: 26 Apr., 2016    Published: 25 May, 2016

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DNA molecules, present in the modern organisms, have preserved the general principle of organization from the primary RNA ancestors, inhabiting the RNA world. In spite of the higher stability and protein-assisted replication, DNA molecules have not developed the new bases in course of their evolution, maintaining the low density of information. Today, DNA-based technologies are limited in the range, efficiency and accuracy of their application by the four bases in the structure of DNA. Development of DNA molecules with higher number of bases could contribute to the resolution of the problem. Moreover, the addition of new letters to the genetic alphabet could be used for the treatment of disorders and development of DNA molecules with extended functionality. These research questions were addressed in the current work by research of the articles present in NCBI and Google Scholar databases. With the application of developed key terms, inclusion and exclusion criteria, six articles published between 2006 and 2016 were selected for analysis. It was identified that most of the applications of DNA with six letters possible for today use are associated with the expansion of the functional abilities of the modern DNA-based methods. Some of the researches show the higher binding ability and affinity of the artificial DNA aptamers, and suggest their application for treatment and increased functions of DNA. However, a greater number of other applications are suggested for the future. 

Expanded alphabet; Personalized medicine; Pharmaceutics; Cancer; Gene technology; Molecular beacon