Synthetic Life, Now a Reality

chillibreeze writer — MA

After the Human Genome Project, the next big bang in the world of biology is the creation of life. After years of dedicated research and millions of dollars, Craig Venter was finally able to create synthetic life. With this creation, it is now understood that an organism can be created or recreated with a modified genome to selectively include certain functions for a specific purpose. In simple terms, an organism can be tailored to suit your functional requirements.

This achievement was lauded by many scientists and also thought to have enormous potential in treating many diseases that plague life on earth today. This also adds a whole new dimension to biotechnology and promises a plethora of avenues where this technology can be used to develop vaccines, site-directed drugs, organ farming, and anticancer drugs, to name a few.

Some believe that this technology can also help in dealing with environmental problems. For example, new organisms can be created that feed on hydrocarbons. They can be used to clean up the oil spillages that occur in various parts of the earth. Endangered species can also be saved.

Though this highly potential technology offers many advantages, a few scientists opine that it may also help in creating biological weapons, and if handled irresponsibly, could create environmental disasters, and therefore, require strict regulations for its usage.

To understand how synthetic life was created, you must know the following:

Genome: A genome is the complete DNA of an organism. DNA carries genes on them that program the production of proteins that are required by all organisms to determine characteristics like immunity, metabolism, and behavioral and physical attributes.

DNA: DNA is built with four chemical units called Bases. They are A-Adenine, T-Thymine, G-Guanine, and C-Cytosine. These bases add up repeatedly throughout the genome. The order in which the base pairs are combined in the genome determines the species as human, animal, etc.

DNA Reconstruction: DNA reconstruction is a process by which the DNA of an organism is analyzed and sequenced using software technologies i.e., the sequence of all the bases in the DNA of a genome is established.

DNA Synthesizer: DNA synthesizer is a scientific machine that is used to custom build DNA from chemicals to contain a specific base pair sequence.

How did they create synthetic life?

Venter et al first reconstructed the genome of a common bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides. The DNA information was then fed into a DNA synthesizer that produced small strands of DNA. The strands were introduced into yeast and then E coli bacteria.

The repair mechanisms of these organisms identified the strands as broken DNA fragments and reconstructed them into longer strands. After many such rounds, they created the entire length of the M. mycoides genome. To identify the genome as “synthetic”, they spliced in fresh strands of DNA that would only carry coded messages and not participate in any cellular functions. This newly created genome with the synthetic marking was then introduced into another bacterium Mycoplasma capricolum.

As the bacterium multiplied, its progeny abandoned its own DNA and began using the synthetic DNA and started making a whole new set of proteins. All the characteristics of the M. capricolum bacterium disappeared and a cell of a new species was created. They called this as a “Synthetic Cell” as it developed due to the synthetic DNA and behaved like the M. mucoides cell, the only difference being the synthetic marking in its DNA.

 

 

 

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