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Genetic Engineering Breakthrough: Building a Genome from Scratch

By Robyn Broyles, August 23, 2009 15:00



Scientists have succeeded in building an organism's entire genome from scratch—without using existing DNA as a mechanical template. The journal Science published a paper August 20 in its online edition announcing that a research team assembled a clone of a bacterial genome inside a yeast cell, then transferred the hand-made genome into a bacteria cell with its own genome* removed.†

The achievement does not qualify as an first artificial lifeform.  The genome was an exact replica of an existing, natural genome (that of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides), and the resulting cell was entirely natural in origin, except for the synthetic genome.

The person behind the research is J. Craig Venter, who also helped speed up the Human Genome Project that was completed in 2007 2000. Venter was also the first person to publish his own entire genome—all six billion letters. (EDIT: The Human Genome Project was completed in 2000, not 2007; that was the year Venter published his own genome.)

* A genome is the complete set of genetic instructions—DNA or occasionally RNA—that acts as the blueprint for an organism.

†The abstract does not actually state that the receiving cell had its genome removed. Since I can only access the abstract and not the entire paper, I cannot confirm that the team took this step; however, there is no other possible way they could have succeeded in the way they described, so I made the inference.

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Tags: genetic engineering, genomics, artificial life, science, biology

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Comments on “Genetic Engineering Breakthrough: Building a Genome from Scratch”

Comment #1 Permalink
That is *so* cool. (It would also be much easier to enjoy if current precedent didn't lead to all sorts of wondering about how this will be turned into yet another way to degrade human life.)

Posted on August 23, 2009 19:41 by Anna | Anna's home page |

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