A step closer to creating life out of chemical soup
Scientists replicate a bacterium's entire genome with off-the-shelf ingredients. The feat could lead to the production of medicines, industrial products and even renewable fuels.
Using off-the-shelf chemical compounds, scientists for the first time have constructed the entire genome of a bacterium, a key step toward their ultimate goal of creating synthetic life forms, researchers reported today.
The man-made DNA was nearly identical to the natural version on which it was based -- with minor modifications to identify it and render it harmless to people, according to the study in the journal Science.
The research team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., is now trying to insert the artificial DNA inside a living cell with the hope that it will take over its host and become the first synthetically created, self-replicating organism.
"This entire process started with four bottles of chemicals," said J. Craig Venter, who has been spearheading the overall project.
Scientists have previously pieced together individual genes and even whole viruses in the lab, but those were not independent life forms. The genome in this study -- from the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium -- is more than 10 times larger than any previously synthesized.
Researchers in the nascent field of synthetic biology hope to use the method as a blueprint for designing microscopic creatures that can produce renewable fuels, medicines and industrial products.
"It's a cookbook for how to make big things," said Andrew Ellington, a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not connected with the study.
Venter, the maverick scientist best known for challenging the federal government's effort to decode the human genome, has been studying M. genitalium for more than a decade. With only 485 protein-coding genes and very little extraneous DNA, its genome is smaller than that of any other free-living organism.
Venter wants to make it even smaller and find out just how many genes are required to create "a minimal operating system for life."
About 100 of the genes can be removed individually without affecting the bacteria's ability to survive. But that doesn't mean all 100 genes can be deleted simultaneously. To determine how many are superfluous, he plans to make thousands of versions of the bacterium and see which ones can survive.
An organism's genome is made up of varying pairs of four chemicals -- adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. These base pairs form the rungs in the spiraling double helix of DNA.
