Scientists Build Possibly The First Man-Made Genome

hackingbear writes "Wired is reporting that researchers have created the longest synthetic genome to date by threading together four long strands of DNA. 'Leading synthetic biologists said with the new work, published Thursday in the journal Science, the first synthetic life could be just months away — if it hasn't been created already. [...] The ability to synthesize longer DNA strands for less money parallels the history of genetic sequencing, where the price of sequencing a human genome has dropped from hundreds of millions of dollars to about $10,000. Just a few years ago, synthesizing a piece of DNA with 5,000 rungs in its helix, known as base-pairs, was impossible. Venter's new synthetic genome is 582,000 base-pairs.' As a programmer, I'm most excited by the possibility of a new platform and the programming jobs that will be created by it."

Comments

Re:Impossible?

[bumby]

unless you believe in "intelligent" design, life on earth wasn't synthesized. At least not by the definition of the word in this domain.

Re:An omission

[reverseengineer]

The parent poses an important question, and as it turns out, Mycoplasma genitalium was a clever choice in that regard: its genome is so streamlined as to lack the machinery to methylate its DNA. In prokaryotes like M. genitalium, methylation is mostly used to distinguish self from non-self DNA, quite useful (restriction enzymes can be used to carve up non-self DNA then), but not strictly necessary; in eukaryotes, it plays a vital role in regulation of gene transcription, so appropriate methylation is very important.

Analyses of M. genitalium suggest it may have orginally had methylation capabilities, but has lost them over time: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=206970&blobtype=pdf

In our analysis, restriction enzyme digestions of M. genitalium genomic DNA, using MspI and HpaII, did not support the fact that CpG methylation currently exists in this genome as evidenced by the identical pattern produced by both restriction enzymes (data not shown). Whether the disparity in CpG dinucleotides in the M. genitalium genome is the result of a now extinct CpG methylase activity or related instead to the codon usage of this organism will require further analysis.

Re:Thanks for the SuperFlu, Craig!

[Sanat]

I'm not going to argue with you about it, I was on a SAC minuteman missile combat targeting team for eight years that was responsible for setting the war plans, setting the targets, installing the launch codes and aligning the missile to true north (before some new self aligning innovations were installed) so I believe I have the right to make my point. Gravity brings down everything including all of the dirt and rock and debris that is highly radioactive. A dead zone for all who enter. That is why we have ground bursts!