Scientists claim to have created a new operating system for life -- a new way of using the genetic code, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world.

In all existing life forms, the four "letters" of the genetic code, called nucleotides, are read in triplets, so that every three nucleotides encode a single amino acid.

Not any more. Now, a team, led by Jason Chin at the University of Cambridge, has redesigned the cell's machinery so that it reads the genetic code in quadruplets, the 'New Scientist' reported.

In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of four nucleotide letters; these genetic "words" are called codons. Each codon codes for an amino acid or stops making a protein chain.

But, the British team has created 256 blank four-letter codons that can be assigned to amino acids that don't even exist yet. To achieve this, the scientists had to redesign three pieces of cellular machinery making proteins.

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