A team from the Venter Institute is reporting this week in Science that it has successfully constructed a synthetic genome for the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, which they call the “M. genitalium JCVI-1.0 genome.” In the paper, the team describes how it assembled “cassettes” of base pairs (basically chunks of DNA made up of about 5000 base pairs) into ever larger sections of the genome before finally assembling the whole sequence in yeast.

So what? Well, theoretically you could use a synthetic genome to act as the “operating system” for new types of organisms. Here’s how the Venter Institute’s Hamilton Smith describes the next step on the Science podcast:

I like the analogy with the computer. You have an operating system, which by itself doesn’t do anything. But when you install it on a computer, then you have a working computer system. It’s the same with the genome. The genome is an operating system for a cell and the cytoplasm of the cell is the hardware that’s required to run that genome. The two together make a living reproducing cells. So, when we chemically synthesize the genome, it’s of no use sitting in a test tube. You have to transplant it into a receptive cytoplasm. Once you do that, then genome is expressed and you have a divided cell … that’s the next big step.

Smith says the Venter team is now focused on stripping the synthetic Mycoplasma genome down to only the genes essential for the microbe’s basic function. Then they’ll try transplanting that stripped down synthetic genome into cells to see if it works.

-Greg Dahlmann

Earlier on blog.bioethics.net:
+ Craig Venter on the “DNA-driven world”
+ Craig Venter on Stephen Colbert
+ Craig Venter on the ethics of creating synthetic organisms