Chemists claim to have created the world's first DNA molecule made almost entirely of artificial parts.The finding could lead to improvements in gene therapy, futuristic nano-sized computers, and other high-tech advances, the Japanese researchers say. DNA, popularly illustrated as a double helix, holds the blueprints of life and controls what every living organism becomes and how it functions.Scientists have tried for years to develop artificial versions of DNA in order to take advantage of its amazing information storage capabilities. Already, DNA has been harnessed to create simple electronic circuits.

For thousands of years, magicians, alchemists, even a few fringe medical practitioners have fueled an unbounded optimism that we can blunt the ravages of time, stay younger for longer, maybe even defeat death itself. Their pitches have usually hinged on some drug, food or device — everything from electricity to yogurt to surgically installing the gonads of animals into our own bodies — that will slow or reverse the aging process. Every decade or so, “anti-aging” promoters grasp onto news coming out of research labs and trumpet those developments as the answer we have all been awaiting.