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A comment on 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists. Parent comment

Re:'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists by Evgeny on Thursday May 20, 2010 @06:57PM (#1365770)
I guess sooner or later the random mutations may make these string "corrupted".
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Re:'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists by Devilboy on Thursday May 20, 2010 @08:14PM (#1365943)
I hope they included checkbits!
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Re:'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists by zackattack on Thursday May 20, 2010 @09:56PM (#1366117)
it may be a misconception but i think that checkbits are a feature of organic dna?
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Re:'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists by biotech on Thursday May 20, 2010 @11:38PM (#1366301)
Yep! There is some error-checking built into dna-replication. The protein that does the replication is called DNA Polymerase. From its wikipedia article:

Error correction is a property of some, but not all, DNA polymerases. This process corrects mistakes in newly-synthesized DNA. When an incorrect base pair is recognized, DNA polymerase reverses its direction by one base pair of DNA. The 3'-5' exonuclease activity of the enzyme allows the incorrect base pair to be excised (this activity is known as proofreading). Following base excision, the polymerase can re-insert the correct base and replication can continue.

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