# Xenobiology

> Xenobiology engineers living systems — or life-like molecular systems — that use chemistries orthogonal to the canonical DNA/RNA/protein alphabet, asking whether life could be instantiated in molecules with different backbones, base pairs, or amino-acid repertoires. Researchers have already demonstrated that synthetic genetic polymers (XNAs) like HNA and LNA can store information, evolve in directed-evolution campaigns, and encode functional aptamers, establishing that heredity and evolvability are not exclusive to natural nucleic acids. The expanded-alphabet work of the Romesberg and Benner groups pushed the genetic code beyond four bases to six, encoding new amino acids and enabling the synthesis of proteins with unprecedented side-chain chemistry. Biosafety motivates much of the field: orthogonal genetic systems that cannot exchange information with wild-type organisms represent a principled route to biocontainment of synthetic biology applications. Practitioners are a tight-knit community of chemical biologists and synthetic biologists working at the frontier where chemistry and the theory of life intersect.

*Source: [https://selltoscientists.com/fields/xenobiology/](https://selltoscientists.com/fields/xenobiology/)*

**Researcher count:** 1,400
**Average funding:** $1.6M

## Subfields

- Synthetic Genetic Polymers (XNAs)
- Expanded Genetic Alphabets
- Orthogonal Ribosomes
- Non-Canonical Amino Acid Incorporation
- Minimal Cell Design

## Key technologies

- Directed Evolution of Polymerases
- SELEX for XNA Aptamers
- Amber Codon Suppression
- Cell-Free Protein Synthesis Systems
- Next-Generation Sequencing of Synthetic Genomes

## Top institutions

- MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge
- Scripps Research Institute
- Harvard Medical School Church Lab
- ETH Zurich
- University of Copenhagen

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