Chinese will beat Ang Moh to mass produce arithmetically created Ang Mohs - to use as slaves.
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/...nthetic-yeast-chromosomesreport/1/901242.html
Chinese scientists create 4 synthetic yeast chromosomes:Report
PTI
Follow @PTI_News [email protected]
March 10, 2017 | UPDATED 14:05 IST
A +A -
Beijing, Mar 10 (PTI) Chinese scientists have assembled four synthetic yeast chromosomes, making it the second country after the US capable of designing and building eukaryotic genomes.
The findings were published in todays edition of journal Science, marking a step closer to building synthetic life, state media reported today.
In the study, researchers with Tianjin University, Tsinghua University and BGI-Shenzhen construct the synthetic active chromosomes through exactly matching the synthetic genome with the designed sequence for the first time, Xinhua news agency reported.
In 2010, the US scientists succeeded in implanting a synthetic genome in a prokaryotic bacterium, marking the first step in chemical synthesis of living organisms.
The new effort is part of a larger project to redesign and re-engineer yeast chromosomes, called the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project, which several research institutes participated in, including those in China and the United States.
Bakers yeast has long served as an important research model because their cells share many features with human cells, but are simpler and easier to study. PTI KJV KJ AKJ KJ
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.
# synthetic yeast chromosomes# Synthetic Yeast Genome# synthetic active chromosomes# synthetic genome# KJ AKJ KJ# Xinhua news agency# synthetic life# important research model# Bakers yeast# eukaryotic genomes
http://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-took-a-major-step-toward-the-first-comp-1793106676
Scientists Just Took a Major Step Toward the First Complex Artificial Life
Kristen V. Brown
Yesterday 2:00pmFiled to: Science
17
6
The humble baker’s yeast. Image: Wikimedia
In 2008, researchers built the first artificial genome, a wonder of synthetic biology in which scientists generated all 582,970 base pairs of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium’s genome entirely from scratch. It was an unparalleled scientific achievement, requiring scientists to carefully design 101 unique DNA fragments so that their codes would overlap and stick together, then bind those fragments piece by piece. It was also small potatoes, one of many steps along the way to eventually creating a synthetic eukaryotic organism.
A new breakthrough now takes humankind closer than ever to developing the first complex artificial life.
In a suite of seven new studies published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers from the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project report that they have successfully synthesized six of the 16 chromosomes that comprise the entire genome of yeast. That puts them more than a third of the way to generating made-from-scratch designer yeast.
Biologists now regularly genetically engineer large swaths of DNA, achieving such triumphs as non-browning apples and correcting mutations that cause deadly disease. But synthesizing an organism’s entire genome could represent an unprecedented level of human control over nature.
“This is very exciting,” said George Church, the Harvard geneticist whose own lab is working on synthesizing the human and pig genomes, nucleotide by nucleotide. “They have tackled some of the hardest things. The other two-thirds of the yeast genome is going to happen much, much faster.”
So why all the fuss over a few million artificial base pairs of a simple, single-celled fungus? The humble baker’s yeast plays a crucial role in synthetic biology. Not only is it a single-celled eukaryote that shares many important cellular processes with humans, in recent years synthetic biologists have engineered it to function something like a living factory for biofuels and drugs. In addition to shedding light on important basic biology questions and acting as a stepping stone to one day synthesizing genomes of more complex organisms, a full set of synthetic chromosomes might allow scientists to create designer versions of yeast that are far more useful and efficient. Scientists might, for example, one day engineer a strain of yeast optimized to survive in high-alcohol environments to more efficiently produce ethanol.
Sponsored
“When you can replace all of yeast’s chromosomes with synthetic ones, you can do so much with it,” said Eric Topol, a geneticist at the Scripps Research Institute who was not involved with the research. “It’s a big advance in biology. We use yeast for everything.”
To pull this genome synthesis off, the many researchers from around the world working on the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project first used specially-designed software to create synthetic versions of five yeast chromosomes. The software, dubbed BioStudio, is almost as big an accomplishment as the synthetic chromosomes themselves—it will likely make genome synthesis much, much easier in the future.
In BioStudio, researchers made many small tweaks to existing yeast DNA, things like removing areas of genetic repetition, and swapping DNA from one chromosome to another in order to create new chromosomes optimized for both research and industry. That designer DNA was then chemically synthesized in small chunks, assembled into bigger chunks and then finally into an entire chromosome. The researchers are reporting the synthesis of five new chromosomes today, bringing the total number of synthetic yeast chromosomes to six. (Yeast chromosome 3 was synthesized from scratch back in 2014.)
Each of those individual chromosomes were then placed into a living yeast cell, swapping the new, synthetic chromosome out for a single wild-type one. In the end, the researchers wound up with six partially-synthetic yeast cells, each with a single synthesized chromosome. In order to create a cell with 16 synthetic chromosomes, those partially synthesized yeast cells will be mated with one another, eventually producing a cell with an entirely synthetic genome. So far, three new synthetic chromosomes have been integrated into a single cell.
“We had two design goals in mind,” said Joel Bader, a biomedical engineer at Johns Hopkins and one of the authors of the new studies. “We wanted to be able to answer biological questions, like, ‘How do you make a chromosome? and ‘Why are genes organized the way that they are?’ And we wanted to design them for applied research, like making small molecule drugs.”
For thousands of years, humans have manipulated yeast to turn wild strains into the stuff that gives us things like beer and bread. The goal now is to untangle and reorganize yeast’s genetic blueprint, eventually creating a cell that has been optimized to remove all the redundancies and faulty design elements that nature endowed it with.
There is one paper for each new chromosome, in addition to one that provides a broad overview of the progress, and another that details the physical, three-dimensional structure of the synthetic yeast.
So far, the synthetic chromosomes are not entirely without error—there were a few off-target effects. The new chromosomes, though, functioned mostly as researchers hoped they would. Bader said than in two to three years they expect to have all 16 chromosomes synthesized and assembled.
“Now that we’ve figured out how to do it, the research is moving very fast,” he said.
To be clear, even once researchers have accomplished the incredible feat of synthesizing the entire yeast genome, they will not have created an entirely synthetic organism. That’s because there is more to life than a genome. DNA is the molecule that encodes hereditary material. There are other parts to the cell, like the cytoplasm. Think of the genome like operating instructions for a computer—you still need the rest of the machine to actually get your program to run.
Topol said that the advance—less than three years after scientists announced they had synthesized a single base-pair of yeast’s genome—underscores just how quickly the field is moving.
“When I started my career, I was thinking of one day being able to read DNA, and dreaming of just maybe one day being able to edit it,” Topol said.
In the short term, a synthetic yeast genome could lead to the creation of designer yeast for manufacturing of vaccines, medicines and more sustainable biofuels. Further down the line, it could lead to custom-built designer organisms—perhaps even designer humans one day.
Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford, said that it’s still not clear whether whole genome synthesis will be a more efficient way of making the desired changes to genomes than editing existing genomes.
“Ten years from now, will it be easier and cheaper to change thousands of base pairs using CRISPR or make to make a genome from scratch?” he said. “That’s a question that depends on technologies that are still being invented.”
Bader, though, said we should view the two approaches as complementary.
“Sometimes you see something someone has written and it has some mistakes, so you want to edit it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s so far off you need to start from scratch.”
Either way, genome synthesis is likely to be plagued by the same sort of ethical questions that have surrounded CRISPR. Just how far should we take humankind’s meddling with nature? If we can create truly synthetic organisms, should we? And how do we make sure our technologies are used for good, rather than bad?
“We live in a world where already everything we eat was engineered by our ancestors and we regularly, easily talk to people hundreds of miles a way,” Greely said. “Civilization is about playing god. The question is not whether to do it, but how to do it in smart ways. We need to figure that out.”
[Science]
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/poli...1/scientists-brink-creating-complex-life-form
Scientists ‘on the brink’ of creating complex life form
Artificial organism based on baker’s yeast expected to come into being by the end of the year
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 09 March, 2017, 4:26pm
UPDATED : Friday, 10 March, 2017, 3:02am
Stephen Chen
Stephen Chen
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The launch of a manned Chinese space mission on a Long March carrier rocket in October last year. Photo: Xinhua
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Chinese scientists are taking part in an immense international project that is expected to create complex artificial life in the laboratory for the first time by the end of the year.
Researchers had previously produced simple life forms such as viruses and bacteria but this time the aim is to make an “eukaryotic organism”, one with cells containing a nucleus surrounded by a membrane and with DNA held together by proteins.
A research team with more than 200 scientists from countries including the United States and China will announce on Friday that Sc2.0, the world’s first artificially designed and built eukaryotic organism, is expected to “come alive” by the end of this year.
The new organism could lead to advances in genetic therapies that could help people live longer, the scientists said.
More than a third of the work was already complete, they said, with successful laboratory synthesis of six of the 16 chromosomes that held the organism’s DNA strands. Their methodology, research observations and technological developments were detailed in seven papers in the latest issue of Science.
[A research team says they can re-engineer yeast cells to help people live longer. Photo: Handout]
Sc2.0 is designed to be a single-cell microorganism derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as baker’s yeast. The artificial blueprint is intended to look “perfect” compared to nature’s raw design, or so the researchers hope. The design plan is to correct, streamline and remove the genetic flaws, transcription chaos and redundancy sequences prone to occur during the “selfish” evolution of natural yeast.
The reworked yeast is expected to be of use from brewing beer to the production of antibiotics.
A human genome redesigned and built from scratch could give rise to new genetic therapies to make people healthier and live longer, the scientists said.
“This work sets the stage for the completion of designer, synthetic genomes to address unmet needs in medicine and industry,” said Professor Jef Boeke, leader of the Sc2.0 project and director of NYU Langone’s Institute for Systems Genetics.
“Beyond any one application, the papers confirm that newly created systems and software can answer basic questions about the nature of genetic machinery by reprogramming chromosomes in living cells,” Boeke said.
Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos for the first time
Professor Yuan Yingjin, a Chinese researcher at Tianjin University who is part of the project, said creating yeast was not easy. Each chromosome contained a large number of chemical codes, and creating them from scratch was both labour intensive and time consuming. But advances in technology meant making life had in a way become similar to building a house, he said.
“We borrowed some ideas from civil engineers,” Yuan said. “Instead of putting up the chromosomes brick by brick, we developed a mass construction method, like house prefabrication, which sped up the progress.”
The DNA codes were “prefabbed” into base chunks, and then assembled into mini-chunks, then mega-chunks for final assembly.
The completed artificial chromosomes would be debugged carefully for errors, and inserted one by one into living yeast cells to replace the natural chromosomes for the creation of S2.0.
“This is playing God,” said Professor Li Jingsong, a Shanghai-based biologist who is not involved in the study.
“Up till now, the evolution of life on this planet has followed the rule of natural selection, which came up with meticulous designs through millions of years, but the new technology might allow humans to sidestep nature, and the result would be a completely new life form.
“Can we really do the job better than nature?” Li asked.
Gene editing used by Chinese researchers on human DNA is Science magazine’s breakthrough of 2015
The Sc2.0 project came after two decades of effort, beginning in 1996 when about 12 million lines of genetic code from baker’s yeast were sequenced.
Though yeast is one of the most researched organisms, it was not until 2014 that the first chromosome was synthesised by a team led by Boeke, who later *initiated the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project with participants from China, France and Scotland.
Of the six completed chromosomes, four were synthesised in China.
Professor Joe Bader, a participant of the project from the High Throughput Biology Centre at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said it had been a “real pleasure” to work with colleagues from China, who came from academic and industrial sectors including Tianjin University, Tsinghua University and BGI, a leading Chinese genome sequencing organisation.
“China has been impressive in promoting areas of science that are set for the biggest breakthroughs and greatest impacts over the coming years.The contributions made by Chinese institutions to Sc2.0 have been impressive and essential to the project, including accomplishments in chromosome synthesis,” and crucial innovations and scientific advances,”Bader said.
The researchers working on the project said their studies *followed ethical guidelines, and the new organism would not pose a danger to the natural environment.
“Yeast is generally considered a safe organism. We have not introduced any alien genes into the Sc2.0, so it should behave just like a natural species. But we will keep it locked in our lab. We will not release it into nature,” Yuan said.
Bader said bioethicists had been full partners in Sc2.0 from the beginning.
“The changes we have designed will make it a valuable platform for contributing to society by making it easier to develop strains that generate valuable products.”
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/...nthetic-yeast-chromosomesreport/1/901242.html
Chinese scientists create 4 synthetic yeast chromosomes:Report
PTI
Follow @PTI_News [email protected]
March 10, 2017 | UPDATED 14:05 IST
A +A -
Beijing, Mar 10 (PTI) Chinese scientists have assembled four synthetic yeast chromosomes, making it the second country after the US capable of designing and building eukaryotic genomes.
The findings were published in todays edition of journal Science, marking a step closer to building synthetic life, state media reported today.
In the study, researchers with Tianjin University, Tsinghua University and BGI-Shenzhen construct the synthetic active chromosomes through exactly matching the synthetic genome with the designed sequence for the first time, Xinhua news agency reported.
In 2010, the US scientists succeeded in implanting a synthetic genome in a prokaryotic bacterium, marking the first step in chemical synthesis of living organisms.
The new effort is part of a larger project to redesign and re-engineer yeast chromosomes, called the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project, which several research institutes participated in, including those in China and the United States.
Bakers yeast has long served as an important research model because their cells share many features with human cells, but are simpler and easier to study. PTI KJV KJ AKJ KJ
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.
# synthetic yeast chromosomes# Synthetic Yeast Genome# synthetic active chromosomes# synthetic genome# KJ AKJ KJ# Xinhua news agency# synthetic life# important research model# Bakers yeast# eukaryotic genomes
http://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-took-a-major-step-toward-the-first-comp-1793106676
Scientists Just Took a Major Step Toward the First Complex Artificial Life
Kristen V. Brown
Yesterday 2:00pmFiled to: Science
17
6
The humble baker’s yeast. Image: Wikimedia
In 2008, researchers built the first artificial genome, a wonder of synthetic biology in which scientists generated all 582,970 base pairs of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium’s genome entirely from scratch. It was an unparalleled scientific achievement, requiring scientists to carefully design 101 unique DNA fragments so that their codes would overlap and stick together, then bind those fragments piece by piece. It was also small potatoes, one of many steps along the way to eventually creating a synthetic eukaryotic organism.
A new breakthrough now takes humankind closer than ever to developing the first complex artificial life.
In a suite of seven new studies published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers from the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project report that they have successfully synthesized six of the 16 chromosomes that comprise the entire genome of yeast. That puts them more than a third of the way to generating made-from-scratch designer yeast.
Biologists now regularly genetically engineer large swaths of DNA, achieving such triumphs as non-browning apples and correcting mutations that cause deadly disease. But synthesizing an organism’s entire genome could represent an unprecedented level of human control over nature.
“This is very exciting,” said George Church, the Harvard geneticist whose own lab is working on synthesizing the human and pig genomes, nucleotide by nucleotide. “They have tackled some of the hardest things. The other two-thirds of the yeast genome is going to happen much, much faster.”
So why all the fuss over a few million artificial base pairs of a simple, single-celled fungus? The humble baker’s yeast plays a crucial role in synthetic biology. Not only is it a single-celled eukaryote that shares many important cellular processes with humans, in recent years synthetic biologists have engineered it to function something like a living factory for biofuels and drugs. In addition to shedding light on important basic biology questions and acting as a stepping stone to one day synthesizing genomes of more complex organisms, a full set of synthetic chromosomes might allow scientists to create designer versions of yeast that are far more useful and efficient. Scientists might, for example, one day engineer a strain of yeast optimized to survive in high-alcohol environments to more efficiently produce ethanol.
Sponsored
“When you can replace all of yeast’s chromosomes with synthetic ones, you can do so much with it,” said Eric Topol, a geneticist at the Scripps Research Institute who was not involved with the research. “It’s a big advance in biology. We use yeast for everything.”
To pull this genome synthesis off, the many researchers from around the world working on the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project first used specially-designed software to create synthetic versions of five yeast chromosomes. The software, dubbed BioStudio, is almost as big an accomplishment as the synthetic chromosomes themselves—it will likely make genome synthesis much, much easier in the future.
In BioStudio, researchers made many small tweaks to existing yeast DNA, things like removing areas of genetic repetition, and swapping DNA from one chromosome to another in order to create new chromosomes optimized for both research and industry. That designer DNA was then chemically synthesized in small chunks, assembled into bigger chunks and then finally into an entire chromosome. The researchers are reporting the synthesis of five new chromosomes today, bringing the total number of synthetic yeast chromosomes to six. (Yeast chromosome 3 was synthesized from scratch back in 2014.)
Each of those individual chromosomes were then placed into a living yeast cell, swapping the new, synthetic chromosome out for a single wild-type one. In the end, the researchers wound up with six partially-synthetic yeast cells, each with a single synthesized chromosome. In order to create a cell with 16 synthetic chromosomes, those partially synthesized yeast cells will be mated with one another, eventually producing a cell with an entirely synthetic genome. So far, three new synthetic chromosomes have been integrated into a single cell.
“We had two design goals in mind,” said Joel Bader, a biomedical engineer at Johns Hopkins and one of the authors of the new studies. “We wanted to be able to answer biological questions, like, ‘How do you make a chromosome? and ‘Why are genes organized the way that they are?’ And we wanted to design them for applied research, like making small molecule drugs.”
For thousands of years, humans have manipulated yeast to turn wild strains into the stuff that gives us things like beer and bread. The goal now is to untangle and reorganize yeast’s genetic blueprint, eventually creating a cell that has been optimized to remove all the redundancies and faulty design elements that nature endowed it with.
There is one paper for each new chromosome, in addition to one that provides a broad overview of the progress, and another that details the physical, three-dimensional structure of the synthetic yeast.
So far, the synthetic chromosomes are not entirely without error—there were a few off-target effects. The new chromosomes, though, functioned mostly as researchers hoped they would. Bader said than in two to three years they expect to have all 16 chromosomes synthesized and assembled.
“Now that we’ve figured out how to do it, the research is moving very fast,” he said.
To be clear, even once researchers have accomplished the incredible feat of synthesizing the entire yeast genome, they will not have created an entirely synthetic organism. That’s because there is more to life than a genome. DNA is the molecule that encodes hereditary material. There are other parts to the cell, like the cytoplasm. Think of the genome like operating instructions for a computer—you still need the rest of the machine to actually get your program to run.
Topol said that the advance—less than three years after scientists announced they had synthesized a single base-pair of yeast’s genome—underscores just how quickly the field is moving.
“When I started my career, I was thinking of one day being able to read DNA, and dreaming of just maybe one day being able to edit it,” Topol said.
In the short term, a synthetic yeast genome could lead to the creation of designer yeast for manufacturing of vaccines, medicines and more sustainable biofuels. Further down the line, it could lead to custom-built designer organisms—perhaps even designer humans one day.
Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford, said that it’s still not clear whether whole genome synthesis will be a more efficient way of making the desired changes to genomes than editing existing genomes.
“Ten years from now, will it be easier and cheaper to change thousands of base pairs using CRISPR or make to make a genome from scratch?” he said. “That’s a question that depends on technologies that are still being invented.”
Bader, though, said we should view the two approaches as complementary.
“Sometimes you see something someone has written and it has some mistakes, so you want to edit it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s so far off you need to start from scratch.”
Either way, genome synthesis is likely to be plagued by the same sort of ethical questions that have surrounded CRISPR. Just how far should we take humankind’s meddling with nature? If we can create truly synthetic organisms, should we? And how do we make sure our technologies are used for good, rather than bad?
“We live in a world where already everything we eat was engineered by our ancestors and we regularly, easily talk to people hundreds of miles a way,” Greely said. “Civilization is about playing god. The question is not whether to do it, but how to do it in smart ways. We need to figure that out.”
[Science]
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/poli...1/scientists-brink-creating-complex-life-form
Scientists ‘on the brink’ of creating complex life form
Artificial organism based on baker’s yeast expected to come into being by the end of the year
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 09 March, 2017, 4:26pm
UPDATED : Friday, 10 March, 2017, 3:02am
Stephen Chen
Stephen Chen
Share
PrintEmail
Related topics
China science
Related Articles
The launch of a manned Chinese space mission on a Long March carrier rocket in October last year. Photo: Xinhua
Diplomacy & Defence
China to develop space rockets to launch from planes
7 Mar 2017
Bone patterns in Xuchang Man’s skull matched to those found in Neanderthals. Photo: Handout
Policies & Politics
Ancient skulls flesh out China’s Neanderthal past
3 Mar 2017
An artist’s rendering of what Anchiornis might have looked like. Scientists are trying to determine whether the creature could indeed fly, as its bone structure and muscular profile suggest. Illustration: Zhao Chuang/Peking Natural Science Organization
Policies & Politics
Chinese discovery hints at how dinosaurs took to the skies
1 Mar 2017
Chinese scientists are taking part in an immense international project that is expected to create complex artificial life in the laboratory for the first time by the end of the year.
Researchers had previously produced simple life forms such as viruses and bacteria but this time the aim is to make an “eukaryotic organism”, one with cells containing a nucleus surrounded by a membrane and with DNA held together by proteins.
A research team with more than 200 scientists from countries including the United States and China will announce on Friday that Sc2.0, the world’s first artificially designed and built eukaryotic organism, is expected to “come alive” by the end of this year.
The new organism could lead to advances in genetic therapies that could help people live longer, the scientists said.
More than a third of the work was already complete, they said, with successful laboratory synthesis of six of the 16 chromosomes that held the organism’s DNA strands. Their methodology, research observations and technological developments were detailed in seven papers in the latest issue of Science.
[A research team says they can re-engineer yeast cells to help people live longer. Photo: Handout]
Sc2.0 is designed to be a single-cell microorganism derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as baker’s yeast. The artificial blueprint is intended to look “perfect” compared to nature’s raw design, or so the researchers hope. The design plan is to correct, streamline and remove the genetic flaws, transcription chaos and redundancy sequences prone to occur during the “selfish” evolution of natural yeast.
The reworked yeast is expected to be of use from brewing beer to the production of antibiotics.
A human genome redesigned and built from scratch could give rise to new genetic therapies to make people healthier and live longer, the scientists said.
“This work sets the stage for the completion of designer, synthetic genomes to address unmet needs in medicine and industry,” said Professor Jef Boeke, leader of the Sc2.0 project and director of NYU Langone’s Institute for Systems Genetics.
“Beyond any one application, the papers confirm that newly created systems and software can answer basic questions about the nature of genetic machinery by reprogramming chromosomes in living cells,” Boeke said.
Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos for the first time
Professor Yuan Yingjin, a Chinese researcher at Tianjin University who is part of the project, said creating yeast was not easy. Each chromosome contained a large number of chemical codes, and creating them from scratch was both labour intensive and time consuming. But advances in technology meant making life had in a way become similar to building a house, he said.
“We borrowed some ideas from civil engineers,” Yuan said. “Instead of putting up the chromosomes brick by brick, we developed a mass construction method, like house prefabrication, which sped up the progress.”
The DNA codes were “prefabbed” into base chunks, and then assembled into mini-chunks, then mega-chunks for final assembly.
The completed artificial chromosomes would be debugged carefully for errors, and inserted one by one into living yeast cells to replace the natural chromosomes for the creation of S2.0.
“This is playing God,” said Professor Li Jingsong, a Shanghai-based biologist who is not involved in the study.
“Up till now, the evolution of life on this planet has followed the rule of natural selection, which came up with meticulous designs through millions of years, but the new technology might allow humans to sidestep nature, and the result would be a completely new life form.
“Can we really do the job better than nature?” Li asked.
Gene editing used by Chinese researchers on human DNA is Science magazine’s breakthrough of 2015
The Sc2.0 project came after two decades of effort, beginning in 1996 when about 12 million lines of genetic code from baker’s yeast were sequenced.
Though yeast is one of the most researched organisms, it was not until 2014 that the first chromosome was synthesised by a team led by Boeke, who later *initiated the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project with participants from China, France and Scotland.
Of the six completed chromosomes, four were synthesised in China.
Professor Joe Bader, a participant of the project from the High Throughput Biology Centre at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said it had been a “real pleasure” to work with colleagues from China, who came from academic and industrial sectors including Tianjin University, Tsinghua University and BGI, a leading Chinese genome sequencing organisation.
“China has been impressive in promoting areas of science that are set for the biggest breakthroughs and greatest impacts over the coming years.The contributions made by Chinese institutions to Sc2.0 have been impressive and essential to the project, including accomplishments in chromosome synthesis,” and crucial innovations and scientific advances,”Bader said.
The researchers working on the project said their studies *followed ethical guidelines, and the new organism would not pose a danger to the natural environment.
“Yeast is generally considered a safe organism. We have not introduced any alien genes into the Sc2.0, so it should behave just like a natural species. But we will keep it locked in our lab. We will not release it into nature,” Yuan said.
Bader said bioethicists had been full partners in Sc2.0 from the beginning.
“The changes we have designed will make it a valuable platform for contributing to society by making it easier to develop strains that generate valuable products.”
