Scientists Create First Artificial Cell - May 25, 2010

Scientists have crossed another threshold in their drive to create artificial life.  This past Friday, they announced that they have produced a living cell powered by a human DNA.

The scientists state that their goal is to develop such things as new fuels, better ways to purify polluted water and produce vaccines more quickly. The real question is if this really is an artificial life form since it was necessary to use existing DNA.

While the scientists are calling this the world’s first synthetic cell it is really the recreation of existing life – changing one simple bacterium into another.  However, Dr. Ron Weiss, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that it is an important step. Even though the man made DNA needed a living cell to “kick start” it, eventually it reproduced, and according to Dr. Weiss “all elements in the cells after some amount of time can be traced to this initial artificial DNA. That's a great accomplishment.”

George Church, a Harvard Medical School professor of genetics said “It's been a long time coming, and it was worth the wait.  It's a milestone that has potential practical applications.”

It has taken a series of baby steps to reach this point.  For years scientists have been able to move single genes and larger chunks of DNA from one species to another.  For example, a number of years ago a team led by Dr. J. Craig Venter, the genome mapping pioneer from Maryland, transplanted an entire natural genome, all of an organism's genes, one bacterium into another and watched it take over — turning a goat germ into a cattle germ.

Next, using laboratory created DNA fragments, they produced smaller bacterium’s genome.

Using what they learned from these two successful experiments, they asked the next logical question: could synthetic DNA take over and drive a living cell? The report made public on Friday answers that in the affirmative.

Dr. Venter, using a computer analogy, said “this is transforming life totally from one species into another by changing the software.”

The researchers picked two species of Mycoplasma, simple germs that contain a single chromosome and lack the cell walls that form barriers in other bacteria. First, they chemically synthesized the genome of M. mycoides, that goat germ, twice as large as the germ genome they'd previously built.  They then transplanted it into a different, but related, living cell from a different Mycoplasma species.

At first, nothing happened, forcing the team to create a genetic version of a computer proofreading program to spell-check the DNA fragments they'd pieced together. What they discovered was a “typo” in the genetic code, in one of the synthetic genome's million chemical base pairs, that was rendering the man-made DNA inactive.  It delayed the project three months while they searched for an restored that bit.

As Dr. Venter said “It shows you how accurate it has to be, one letter out of a million.”

As soon as the repair was made, the transplant worked.  The recipient cell, which was synthetic, was “booted up” by the living DNA and started to produce only proteins that would be found in the copied goat germ.  It reproduced a small colony of germs in a lab dish.  The researchers had tagged the synthetic DNA to be able to tell it apart, and confirmed that those new ones really looked and behaved like M. mycoides, not the recipient cell.

Ethicists reacted almost immediately.  Catholic Church officials said Friday that this can be a positive development if used properly, but if it turns out not to be useful to human dignity it would be considered immoral.  They warned scientists that only God can create life.

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