Well, when they said that the 21st century was going to be all about biology, they weren’t kidding. It seems that a team of 17 scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute have created the first synthetic bacterial genome. The largest to-date man-made DNA structure was created “by synthesizing and assembling the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0″. This bacterium was chosen because it has the smallest genome that can be grown in a pure culture. Before Thursday’s press announcement, the largest synthesized DNA structure had 32,000 base pairs. The basic process they followed had several steps and began with resequencing the bacterium’s genome, just to make sure it was accurately known. They then designed fragments of chemically synthesized DNA “to build 101 “cassettes” of 5,000 to 7,000 base pairs of genetic code”. The synthetic fragments of the bacterium were distinguished from the real thing by watermarks inserted into the synthetic sequences. The processes thereafter involved stitching these fragments until all 582,920 base pairs were joined together. Their next goal is to incorporate the synthetic DNA sequence into a cell, and thereby create the first synthetic life form.

It is amazing what these scientists have accomplished. I can’t say that I don’t find it a bit scary, though. We humans have access to all sorts of powerful tools these days, gratis science, but I think we have a long way to go before we are out of the romper room. The dream is for this type of science to become a tool to create, for instance, fuel that we can use. I think what isn’t being said, though, is that it will allow us to do, much, much more. Blade Runner, anyone?

• Venter Institute Press Release

• Man-Made Genome