Artificial life by New Year’s?
Artificial life by New Year’s?
In California, a report on Craig Venter in Discover focuses on the Synthetic Genomics founder’s ambitions to develop synthetic life forms. While researchers have succeeded in “stitching together pieces of synthesized DNA” and transplanting that to a host bacterium; but the bacterium has been rejecting the genome as an invader, until recent efforts to add methyl tags to M. mycoides allowed the genome to go unnoticed by the bacterial defense system.
The prize? Energy microbes that become monocellular biorefineries, consuming waste energy and converting it to biofuels.
It is unclear whether the Synthetic Genomics research effort with ExxonMobil in algae will directly benefit from the R&D effort, as algae is a much more highly complex organism than bacteria. But Venter told the Times, “Assuming we don’t make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year.”
Last March, the co-founder of advanced biofuels producer LS9, Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School, said that his two-man research team at Harvard had synthesized an artificial ribosome, a “biological machine” or “cell engine” that is found in every living organism and is the biological manufacturer of proteins.
More on artificial life forms and the potential for biofuels at biofuelsdigest.com