科学狂人J. Craig Venter又有新动作，制造出一个仅含473个基因（可能是维持生存必需的最小数目基因）的单细胞生物（a single-celled organism that has just 473 genes — likely close to the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain its life）。
When the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman died, in early 1988, he left behind a maxim scrawled on the blackboard of his office at Caltech: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” The words have been repeated often by scientists in many fields, but never so indelibly as when researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Maryland, encoded them into the genome of a living organism, in 2010. Venter and his colleagues called their new entity syn1.0. It was a replica, with a few extra snippets of DNA thrown in, of Mycoplasma mycoides, a parasite that causes pneumonia in goats. Syn1.0 was the first human-engineered genome to be capable of controlling a cell, and Venter’s group
Now, the pioneering scientist Craig Venter and his colleagues have engineered a bacterium to have only 473 genes. “It is a profound result,” Adam Arkin of Berkeley Synthetic Biology Institute told Quartz. To build Syn 3.0, Venter and his colleagues started with a bacterium they had designed in 2010, Syn 1.0, which had some 900 genes.
Quartz
Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome
A goal in biology is to understand the molecular and biological function of every gene in a cell. One way to approach this is to build a minimal genome that includes only the genes essential for life. In 2010, a 1079-kb genome based on the genome ofMycoplasma mycoides(JCV-syn1.0) was chemically synthesized and supported cell growth when transplanted into cytoplasm. Hutchison IIIet al.used a design, build, and test cycle to reduce this genome to 531 kb (473 genes). The resulting JCV-syn3.0 retains genes involved in key processes such as transcription and translation, but also contains 149 genes of unknown function.
Scientists announced Thursday that they have built a single-celled organism that has just 473 genes - likely close to the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain its life. The development, they say, could eventually lead to new manufacturing methods. Around 1995, a few top geneticists set out on a quest: to make an organism that had only the genes that were absolutely essential for its survival. A zero-frills life. It was a heady time. "That was the first time anybody had seen the complete genome of anything," says J. Craig Venter, a genome scientist and founder and CEO of the J. Craig Venter Institute. Back then, he and his colleagues had just sequenced the complete genomes of two types
A pioneering accomplishment in the field of genetic research could help scientists gain new insights into the very definition of life. The new research, published Thursday in the journal Science, describes the synthetic creation of a “minimal genome” - a cell containing only the genes absolutely required to keep itself alive. With just 473 genes, it’s the smallest genome of any living, dividing cell found in nature and may provide important insights into the fundamental genetic requirements for life. SEE ALSO: There may be a genetic link between creativity and mental illness The idea of designing and studying a “minimal genome” is a concept that’s fascinated scientists for decades. In fact, unlocking
Peel away the layers of a house-the plastered walls, the slate roof, the hardwood floors-and you’re left with a frame, the skeletal form that makes up the core of any structure. Can we do the same with life? Can scientists pare down the layers of complexity to reveal the essence of life, the foundation on which biology is built? That’s what Craig Venter and his collaborators have attempted to do in a new study published this week in the journal Science. Venter’s team painstakingly whittled down the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacterium that lives in cattle, to reveal a bare-bones set of genetic instructions capable of making life. The result is a tiny organism named syn3.0 that contains
We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08–mega–base pairMycoplasma mycoidesJCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into aM. capricolumrecipient cell to create newM. mycoidescells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome. The only DNA in the cells is the designed synthetic DNA sequence, including “watermark” sequences and other designed gene deletions and polymorphisms, and mutations acquired during the building process. The new cells have expected phenotypic properties and are capable of continuous self-replication.
