Here's the (short) article relating to artificial life:

Wired News - AP News

And here's the quote about the 'brains' of the proposed new lifeforms:

"Szostak is also optimistic about the next step - getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system."

So maybe it will be 'real' DNA, and maybe it won't. I'd think using actual DNA (e.g., the nucleotides, standard double-helix model) as the blueprint to get started might make things easier on them, but I'm not a genetic scientist, so I don't really know. 'Working genetic system' is a lot more characters than DNA though, and I'm lazy.