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Scientists made serious headway this year in tackling why life is both so darn complicated and so darn simple. Researchers upped life’s genetic complexity by coaxing a strain of the bacterium E. coli into using two synthetic genetic letters in addition to the standard four to build strands of DNA. Another team took a minimalist approach, creating a pared-down version of a yeast chromosome.
“These are big achievements,” says Ross Thyer of the University of Texas at Austin. Future work may produce unforeseen engineering marvels, he says.