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Journalism of Courage
Scientists have accomplished a major milestone in the journey to creating complex cells with an entirely synthetic genome. Biologists created a strain of yeast which has a genome that is more than 50 per cent synthetic DNA. Half of the 16 chromosomes of the strain were designed and created from scratch.
The impressive feat was the result of a collaboration of a group of labs that have been trying to create a strain of yeast with a fully synthetic genome for the last 15 years—the Sc2.0 consortium. Their latest achievement has been described in a series of papers in the journals Cell and Cell Genomics.
Scientists have already engineered some viruses and bacteria to have completely synthetic genomes, according to Nature, but they all had simple genetic structures. Apart from their simple genetic structures, they also had simple inner configurations.
The Sc2.0 teams worked on brewer’s yeast for their research, but the idea was to get a better understanding of complex cells so that they create strains for industrial use in the future, according to New Scientist. For example, they could create strains of yeast that make medicines and biofuels instead of beer.
Interestingly, the scientists have completed creating synthetic versions of all 16 yeast chromosomes. But actually putting them in a single strain of yeast could take another year or so. According to project lead Jef Boeke, the issue is not physically assembling the strain, rather, it is “debugging the synthetic chromosomes.
As the scientists built things, they discovered “bugs” that are the result of changes that they made without realising that they could have a negative impact.
