A Synthetic Bacterial Genome
This is already old news, but in this week’s issue of Science, Gibson et al. published their paper on the synthesis of a genome of Mycoplasma genitalium. (Sometimes I just have to wait for a physical copy of the journal to arrive before I have time to read a paper.) This work was performed at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland. A special commentary in the Perspectives section, “Reconstruction of the Genomes”, was written by Drew Endy, who is Assistant Professor in the Biological Engineering Department at MIT. (A subscription to Science is required to read the paper and the commentary.)
The paper was originally published online on 24 January 2008, at which time there was a lot of coverage in the press and in blogs. For example, see “Synthetic Genome: Signed, Sealed, Decoded”, by Andrew Pollack of the New York Times, and a roundup of coverage of the announcement at blog.bioethics.net. This paper was also the topic of Science Friday on 25 January 2008.
While the assembly of this synthetic genome is without a doubt a significant technical achievement, the paper does not reveal whether the genome can be transplanted into a bacterial cell. This makes the result anticlimactic; it was like reading about the building of a new airplane, with lots of description about the design of the wings and how the rivets had to be placed just so, but without a demonstration that the airplane could actually fly. I suspect strongly that the transplantation was attempted (several times) without success.
The same group has shown that it is indeed possible to transplant a genome from one bacterial species to another, as described in a paper in Science by Lartigue et al. We must now wait for the JCVI to get their airplane off the ground.
March 05 2008 11:03 pm | Biology
