Heralding a new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday.
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Although the new cell, a form of bacteria, was conceived solely as a demonstration project, several biologists were certain that the laboratory technique used to birth it would soon be applied to other strains of bacteria with commercial potential. "I think this quickly will be applied to all the most important industrial bacteria," said biologist Christopher Voigt at the University of California, San Francisco, who is developing microbes that help make gasoline.
Already several companies are seeking to take advantage of the new field, called synthetic biology, which combines chemistry, computer science, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology to breed industrial life forms that can secrete fuels, vaccines or other saleable products.
Indeed, Synthetic Genomics Inc., a company founded by Dr. Venter, funded the experiments and owns the intellectual property rights to the cell-creation techniques. The company has a $600 million contract with Exxon Mobil Corp. to design algae that can capture carbon dioxide and make fuel.
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To make the synthetic cell, a team of 25 researchers at labs in Rockville, Md., and San Diego, Calif., led by bioengineer Daniel Gibson and Dr. Venter essentially turned computer code into a new life form. They started with a species of bacteria called Mycoplasma capricolum and, by replacing its genome with one they wrote themselves, turned it into a customized variant of a second species called Mycoplasma mycoides, they reported.
To begin, they wrote out the creature's entire genetic code as a digital computer file documenting more than one million base pairs of DNA in a biochemical alphabet of adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. They edited that file, adding new code, and then sent that electronic data to a DNA sequencing company called Blue Heron Bio in Bothell, Wash., where it was transformed into hundreds of small pieces of chemical DNA, they reported.
To assemble the strips of DNA, the researchers said they took advantage of the natural capacities of several types of existing cells to meld genes and chromosomes: They used yeast and e. coli bacteria to stitch those short sequences into ever-longer fragments until they had assembled the complete genome, as the entire set of an organism's genetic instructions is called.
They transplanted that master set of genes into an emptied cell, where it converted the cell into a different species.
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To set this novel bacterium—and all its descendants—apart from any natural creation, Dr. Venter and his colleagues wrote their names into the creature's chemical DNA code, along with three apt quotations. "They put some poetry into the genome," said Dr. Voigt.
The scientists also encoded an email address and the name of a website, so that anyone who successfully deciphered the quotations hidden in the genome could notify the scientists.
More importantly, these genetic watermarks allow the researchers to pick out their cells from among more natural varieties and, eventually, to assert ownership.
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