{"id":1853,"date":"2010-05-21T03:17:48","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T03:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/?p=1853"},"modified":"2010-05-21T03:17:48","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T03:17:48","slug":"synthetic-genomics-announced-its-first-synthetic-life-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/synthetic-genomics-announced-its-first-synthetic-life-form.html","title":{"rendered":"Synthetic Genomics Announced its First Synthetic Life Form"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Craig Venter, the US genomics pioneer, announced last night that  scientists at his laboratories in Maryland and California had succeeded  in their 15-year project to make the world&#8217;s first &#8220;synthetic cells&#8221; &#8211;  bacteria called <em>Mycoplasma mycoides<\/em> .<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have passed  through a critical psychological barrier,&#8221; Dr Venter told the Financial  Times. &#8220;It has changed my own thinking, both scientifically and  philosophically, about life and how it works.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The researchers built up the synthetic genome of <em>M mycoides<\/em> ,  with its million chemical letters, by stitching together shorter  stretches of DNA, each about 1,000 letters long. They then transferred  the completed genome into the shell of another bacterium <em>M capricolum<\/em> whose own DNA had been removed.<\/p>\n<p>The transplanted genome &#8220;booted  up&#8221; the host cell and took over its biological machinery. After 30 cell  divisions, there were billions of synthetic bacteria in the lab dishes &#8211;  all of them making exclusively the biological molecules associated with  <em>M mycoides.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/35707814-646f-11df-8cba-00144feab49a.html\">See more<\/a><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craig Venter, the US genomics pioneer, announced last night that scientists at his laboratories in Maryland and California had succeeded in their 15-year project to make the world&#8217;s first &#8220;synthetic cells&#8221; &#8211; bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides . &#8220;We have passed through a critical psychological barrier,&#8221; Dr Venter told the Financial Times. &#8220;It has changed my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-algae-energy-companies","category-algae-fuel-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1855,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1853\/revisions\/1855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.oilgae.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}