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posted by chromas on Tuesday April 02 2019, @11:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the playing-$deity dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

First bacterial genome created entirely with a computer

C. ethensis-2.0 is based on the genome of a well-studied and harmless freshwater bacterium, Caulobacter crescentus, which is a naturally occurring bacterium found in spring water, rivers and lakes around the globe. It does not cause any diseases. C. crescentus is also a model organism commonly used in research laboratories to study the life of bacteria. The genome of this bacterium contains 4,000 genes. Scientists previously demonstrated that only about 680 of these genes are crucial to the survival of the species in the lab. Bacteria with this minimal genome are viable under laboratory conditions.

Beat Christen, Professor of Experimental Systems Biology at ETH Zurich, and his brother, Matthias Christen, a chemist at ETH Zurich, took the minimal genome of C. crescentus as a starting point. They set out to chemically synthesise this genome from scratch, as a continuous ring-shaped chromosome.

[...] To create a DNA molecule as large as a bacterial genome, [...] the scientists at ETH Zurich synthesised 236 genome segments, which they subsequently pieced together.

[...] To synthesise the genome segments in the simplest possible way, and then piece together all segments in the most streamlined manner, the scientists radically simplified the genome sequence without modifying the actual genetic information (at the protein level). There is ample latitude for the simplification of genomes, because biology has built-in redundancies for storing genetic information. For example, for many protein components (amino acids), there are two, four or even more possibilities to write their information into DNA.

The algorithm developed by the scientists at ETH Zurich makes optimal use of this redundancy of the genetic code. Using this algorithm, the researchers computed the ideal DNA sequence for the synthesis and construction of the genome, which they ultimately utilised for their work.

As a result, the scientists seeded many small modifications into the minimal genome, which in their entirety are, however, impressive: more than a sixth of all of the 800,000 DNA letters in the artificial genome were replaced, compared to the "natural" minimal genome. "Through our algorithm, we have completely rewritten our genome into a new sequence of DNA letters that no longer resembles the original sequence. However, the biological function at the protein level remains the same," says Beat Christen.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @09:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @09:45PM (#823800)

    So cross compile.

    Use existing cells to make the whole set of pieces for a synthetic one.

    Given we are cellular machines and have few clues the actual consequences of doing this in the wild, I'm not really happy with someone getting academic kudos for doing this.
    Even if they did it in a very controlled environment, if this becomes common, it's only a matter of time before it ends up in the wild.