This was a poison to most of the E. coli, but by selecting, mutating, selecting again for E. coli that could survive on fluoridated tryptophan, Ellington was able to grow a species of E. coli, the Un-coli that was completely adapted to live on fluoridated tryptophan, an organism with a metabolism completely different than any other living thing on Earth. Ellington described some computer experiments in which the real genome of E. coli was compared to an artificial construction of bases. There was a great difference. Then they compared the patterns in the base code of E. coli to the kernel of the computer operating system Linux, expressed as 0s and 1s in binary code. There was again a great difference.
Life uses a much greater range of functions.
They are going to analyze language, poetry. This gives rise to the possibility of using a related technique to analyze a gas blob from Aldebaran to see if it is alive before it eats us.