The J. Craig Venter Institute has just announced the creation of the first bacterial cell controlled by a genome that is entirely chemically synthesized (PDF). The group has been working towards this goal for several years now, first working out how to synthesize and assemble such large pieces of DNA and how to transplant a genome from one organism to another. This result puts it all together, a synthetic version of the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides and transplantation into a Mycoplasma capricolum cell. This synthetic cell is almost identical to a natural M. mycoides, but also…
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