Steven Benner

New Capabilities

As of September 2026: Co-designed the Hachimoji alphabet and the transcription experiments

All life on Earth runs on four DNA letters. Researchers at UC San Diego have shown that one of biology's core enzymes can read an eight-letter alphabet that includes four synthetic letters. The finding, published in Nature Communications, is a step toward engineered biological systems that use genetic information nature never wrote.

Updated Sep 7