Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute designed a bacterial genome entirely on computer, chemically built the DNA from scratch, and inserted it into a bacterial cell that had been emptied of its own genetic material.
The synthetic genome, 1.08 million base pairs long and modeled on the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides, included watermark sequences spelling out the names of the researchers and institutions involved, hidden in the genetic code itself. The recipient cells, now running only on the designed DNA, grew and divided normally.
The resulting cells behaved like ordinary bacteria, self-replicating and carrying out normal metabolism, even though every instruction inside them had been written on a computer first. The achievement, nicknamed Synthia, opened the door to the deliberate design of simple organisms for research and industry, and raised early questions about biosecurity that the field is still working through.
Read the original study
Gibson et al., Science, 2010 · doi.org/10.1126/science.1190719
A genome written on a screen, alive.
Source
- Gibson, D. G., Glass, J. I., Lartigue, C., Noskov, V. N., Chuang, R.-Y., Algire, M. A., Benders, G. A., Montague, M. G., Ma, L., Moodie, M. M., Merryman, C., Vashee, S., Krishnakumar, R., Assad-Garcia, N., Andrews-Pfannkoch, C., Denisova, E. A., Young, L., Qi, Z.-Q., Segall-Shapiro, T. H., . . . Venter, J. C. (2010). Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome. Science, 329(5987), 52–6. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1190719