KellanStec

To the regular readers that I probably don’t even have, I am sorry for my lack of activity in the past two months. My summer job has been keeping me very busy. I might write about that later.

A few days ago, I saw this article, and found it to be very interesting. Apparently, some scientists have managed to inject foreign DNA into a bacterium of another species with few adverse side effects. The bacterium acted as though it were the organism from which the DNA originated. The success rate was not very high (1 out of every 150,000 attempts), but with more research the rate should improve.

The team includes Craig Venter (the first man to have his entire genome read) and Ham Smith (a Nobel Prizewinner). Venter was featured on The Colbert Report on February 27, 2007 and is also the co-founder of Synthetic Genomics. I suggest visiting their website and looking around. It’s cool stuff. They describe the process in greater detail there–and with pictures!

Anyone familiar with genetics knows that this “species transplant” is a huge step for scientists. What exactly does this mean for us? Well, with more research and fine-tuning of the technique, we will be able to inject synthetic genes into bacterium (or even multicellular organisms!) to basically get them to do whatever we want. We could program them to digest toxic chemicals into something harmless, produce fuel, absorb CO₂ from the air, among many other uses.

Here’s what I envision scientists doing with this amazing technology. They could start from scratch, and create a genome minimal to supporting life in the bacterium. This would only require genes for metabolizing energy, reproduction, and other (minor?) cell functions. From this “parent genome”, they could add all kinds of genetic material. This is entirely possible with the help of computers, although there would be a significant amount of time involved until we can perfect the technique.

I like this quote from another article:

Journalists have often asked if the creation of artificial life is a step too far, whether Dr Venter and his team are ‘playing God’. (‘We don’t play,’ Ham Smith likes to joke.)

It will be interesting to see how long it takes the team to develop an entirely new organism from scratch. Will “within months” be accurate?

Further information:
Download the mp3 interview with Roger Highfield. (2.1 MB)
Visit the Synthetic Genomics homepage.

Filed under: Science, Technology by kellanstec