Some years ago I stumbled upon on an article discussing about “Synthetic Biology” and remembering not paying too much attention to it seemed to me as Synthetic biology was more of an area touching at science-fiction than actually Science.

I was not wrong… but not right either.

It was until some months ago researching books on molecular biology that I found “Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life”by “J. Craig Venter which happened to be about this subject and after reading the book cover to cover the book opened my eyes on a whole field I wasn’t aware of.

As it is clearly said within the book, most of molecular biology and related fields fall towards a reductionist experimental approach while synthetic biology ultimate goal is all about creation.

The book is an beautiful synthesis of all the major scientific breakthroughs (and when suited J. Craig Venter involvement) that lead to the historical event of the first “living” “synthetic” cell ever made in history[1].

Going throughout the history we rediscover the key experiments that went against “vitalism” during the 19th century to the many stepping stones from the 50’s to the 70’s that lead to the foundation of today’s molecular biological knowledge.

But most importantly I discovered that it was Schrödinger with this book “What is life” was the first that aimed to describe life with physics and chemistry alone and that the ultimate success of J. Craig Venter was he and his team managed to leave evidence of that heritage.

In summary what happened is that J. Craig Venter and this team managed to transplant a synthetic bacterial genome to another bacterial species and used protein expression visualization to point that indeed DNA is the software of life as the cell had changed to a “synthetic cell”.

More technically they first started out by creating their first synthetic genome by using a bacteria called M. genitalium[2] as it was the smallest known genome that could constitute a living self-replicating cell. They cut it up into 101 cassettes (DNA snippets) insert to a yeast cell (eukaryotic) and reconstitute the synthetic genome with the Deinococcus (bacteria) repair system.

Secondly with another intermediate experiment, they successfully transplanted the genome of M. mycoides to M. capricolum another bacterial species. This illustrated the principle of DNA as the software of life.

But one of the most challenging aspects was moving the synthetic chromosome within the yeast cell to a prokaryotic cell (bacteria) as to create synthetic life.

Since bacteria’s have different systems of DNA methylation (as to protect their own restrictive enzymes) and DNA conformations to yeast cells. As such they could only be used as an intermediate step towards their goal of a synthetic cell.

M. genitalium became too problematic for this execution so after initial reluctance the team switched to the M. mycoides as the genome to be “synthesized”. Long story short they succeed and made headlines in May 2010.

The implications are immense as they managed to go from a digital code to chemical expression.

As J. Craig Venter extrapolates this idea (translate code to chemical form) in his book, he visions a future where hypothetically this could lead to an endless amount of customized solutions available worldwide within an instant. Imagine a world where vaccines, strains, antibiotics could be sent within seconds abroad or even to space. That is a future that could very well happen within our lifetimes.

LINKS:

• Craig Venter Institute : http://www.jcvi.org/cms/home/
• John Craig Venter : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Venter
• Craig Venter creates synthetic life form: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form

Works Cited

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[1] I use quote marks as the term “living” “synthetic” can both be subject to different interpretations.

[2] Mycoplasma bacterias are bacterais without any cell wall