Truth is stranger than fiction...
May 20, 2010
Courtesy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and World Science staff
Scientists say they have developed the first cell controlled by an artificial genome.
Although it’s a near copy of a natural genome, the researchers say their method can be used to better understand the basic machinery driving life, and to engineer bacteria for tasks such as fuel production or environmental cleanup.
The synthetic cells, dubbed JCVI syn 1.0. (Courtesy AAAS)
The research group, at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., was already credited with chemically producing a bacterial genome, and with transplanting the genome of one bacterium to another. In the latest work, reported in the May 21 issue of the research journal Science, the team combined both methods. The result is what they call a “synthetic cell,” though only its genome is synthetic, or artificial.
See the full article: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100520_synthetic
