Epigenetics Comes of Age

Craig’s Group’s New Breakthrough

On May 20 the J.Craig Venter Institute issued the following press release:

“First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial CellFirst Self-Replicating, Synthetic Bacterial Cell Constructed by J. Craig Venter Institute ResearchersROCKVILLE, MD and San Diego, CA (May 20, 2010)”

— Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit genomic research organization, published results today describing the successful construction of the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell. The team synthesized the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides genome. The synthetic cell is called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and is the proof of principle that genomes can be designed in the computer, chemically made in the laboratory and transplanted into a recipient cell to produce a new self-replicating cell controlled only by the synthetic genome. …………. According to Dr. Smith, “With this first synthetic bacterial cell and the new tools and technologies we developed to successfully complete this project, we now have the means to dissect the genetic instruction set of a bacterial cell to see and understand how it really works.”  While the technical achievement and its potential applications are laudable I want to make two remarks.First, the idea that this is “the first synthetic bacterial cell” may be misleading.What they have synthesized is not a cell but something much more modest: a whole genome of an organism and inserted it into another closely related microorganism. From a theoretical view, the synthesis of a molecule as conservative as DNA, is incomparably simpler than constructing the tremendously complex cytoplasmic structures of the cell, which may require centuries, if ever, to be achieved.Second, the idea that in this case the genome took over the cell is doubtful at best. Probably the reverse is true: if the synthetic genome is the toolkit, as biologists generally agree, the host cell may be the user of the toolkit that having deprived of its own toolkit makes the best it can of the new toolkit that Venter’s group provided it with.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010 at 4:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.