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My understanding is that they actually assembled the DNA from small nucleotide sequences, not by taking an actual bacteria and just removing bits. Once they ha

My understanding is that they actually assembled the DNA from small nucleotide sequences, not by taking an actual bacteria and just removing bits. Once they had an assembled chromosome (I believe it was a single ring), the scooped out the dna form a different strain of bacteria, placed their DNA hoop into the empty one, and it reproduced. So, it is still a far way from starting with beakers of the elements, but certainly a bigger accomplishment than slicing some genes out of an existing bacteria.

entee 8y ago
This paper appears to be a mix of what you're suggesting, original paper here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/aad6253 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/aad6253 They tried paring down a genome to its essential elements and failed. They then combined their designed genome with bits and pieces cut out from the larger, original genome, mixing and matching parts until they found the smallest subset of "parts" needed to run a fully self-replicating cell. The closest CS equivalent is that this was a kind of genetic algorithm with a focus on making a small codebase that minimally accomplishes replication, starting from a set of known-to-work pieces of code. Open questions remaining: - They found 149 genes of unclear function that were required to enable replication, what do those genes do? - If you make a cell this way, how good is it at surviving? In culture, many model systems (yeast, e. coli) outcompete everything in the media by being faster at reproducing themselves (among other strategies). If these cells barely reproduce, other contaminating cells will go faster, making these minimal cells not very good for actual synthetic biology tasks without further modification (maybe they make a toxin while being immune themselves).
- dnautics 8y ago
  Last I heard many of the GUFs are small integral membrane proteins, so the running theory is that they need to be there (and in quantities) to maintain isotonic homeostasis for the cell. The hard to test but interesting question is whether, though they need to be there, that they are there is more important than what they are.

entee 8y ago

This paper appears to be a mix of what you're suggesting, original paper here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/aad6253 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/aad6253 They tried paring down a genome to its essential elements and failed. They then combined their designed genome with bits and pieces cut out from the larger, original genome, mixing and matching parts until they found the smallest subset of "parts" needed to run a fully self-replicating cell. The closest CS equivalent is that this was a kind of genetic algorithm with a focus on making a small codebase that minimally accomplishes replication, starting from a set of known-to-work pieces of code. Open questions remaining: - They found 149 genes of unclear function that were required to enable replication, what do those genes do? - If you make a cell this way, how good is it at surviving? In culture, many model systems (yeast, e. coli) outcompete everything in the media by being faster at reproducing themselves (among other strategies). If these cells barely reproduce, other contaminating cells will go faster, making these minimal cells not very good for actual synthetic biology tasks without further modification (maybe they make a toxin while being immune themselves).

dnautics 8y ago
Last I heard many of the GUFs are small integral membrane proteins, so the running theory is that they need to be there (and in quantities) to maintain isotonic homeostasis for the cell. The hard to test but interesting question is whether, though they need to be there, that they are there is more important than what they are.