Yes, it's a mostly natural code. But they wrote it. They just weren't sure what they could write that would be biologically competent. Cells are incredibly complicated and it caan be very difficult to predict the cellular consequences. Now that they accomplished this major scientific milestone, the synthesis of an entire genome and the creation of a lifeform from this genome, they're hard at work to make more interesting, synthetic organisms.
There first goal seems to be genome reduction, creating the 'minimal cell'. They hope to provide a better workhorse microbe for bioengineering that's stripped of nonessential cellular function. I'm sure once they accomplish this miraculous feat, you'll just scoff and say "so what, that thing's way more simple than a 'real' cell!" which is exactly what they're going for.
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