Dr. Craig Venter has created the world’s first synthetic life form.
An article published in Science today shows Dr. Venter and his team created a complete genome from scratch, using chemically synthesized fragments. These fragments can only be made to about 80bp long and as he describes are like legos; they have to piece them together to create the genome. The genome is based on an existing bacterium but has been altered so that it will only grow on super rich media. They did this to ensure containment. They also use “watermarks” to encode their names’ into the genome, to show that it is synthetic.
They then insert the synthetic genome into a cell. He describes the genome as the software of the cell. Once the cell has new software the cell will completely changes its processes and become whatever the software tells it to. Dr. Venter also talk about how this changes the way we think about life. Life is now shown to be dynamic. One day a cell is a bacteria the next its yeast.
He tells about the possible applications of this technology. We will be able to program cells to create biofuels or to make algae to absorb CO2 or create vaccines without the need of chicken eggs.
This break through is estimated to be worth trillions of dollars.
This article has a Skype interview with Dr. Venter:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail??blogid=150&entry_id=64058
You can find the research paper here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/creation-bacterial-cell-craig-venter
C. Venter et al., 20 May 2010, Sciencexpress
This guy has been working on this stuff for a while. Interesting that this should go public now, since, to the best of my knowledge, he was working on a synthetic organism to help clean up oil spills...
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