“We’re here today to announce the first synthetic cell,” said genetic pioneer Craig Venter at a press conference held on Thursday at Washington, D.C.’s Newseum. “This is the first self-replicating cell we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”
Venter called his work the culmination of a “15-year quest.” He was flanked by a team of scientists from the Maryland-based J. Craig Venter Institute, including Daniel Gibson, Clyde Hutchinson and Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith. Venter is best known for his work in mapping the human genome a decade ago. Details of this breakthrough, the last in a three-step process, will be published in the journal Science. Two years ago, the team chemically synthesized a bacterial genome. Next, they successfully transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another bacterium. Now, they have combined those two steps, “starting with a digital code in a computer, building the chromosome from four bottles of chemicals, assembling that chromosome in yeast and transplanting it into a recipient bacterial cell,” Venter explained.
Full Story: Synthetic Biology Breakthrough – Self Replicating Synthetic Cell – Popular Mechanics