After a 15-year marathon, researchers have created the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome, reported online today at Science. The advance, a landmark in synthetic biology, could someday be used to engineer microbes for environmental or medical applications. "This is a very impressive piece," said Jim Collins, a bioengineer at Boston University, who was not involved in the study. The research is a "methodological tour de force," said Collins.
Combining a series of techniques developed since 1995, J. Craig Venter and colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland began with a digitized genome sequence of Mycoplasma mycoides, a fast-growing bacterium with a 1-million-base genome. They ordered the pieces of that genome from a DNA sequence manufacturer, then used yeast to stitch the pieces together into a whole genome. The researchers transferred the synthetic M. mycoides genome into a M. capricolum recipient cell, replacing the native DNA, ...
