Life, but not quite as we know it...

School of Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield

IN recent weeks, television, newspapers and the web have been awash with headlines regarding the creation of artificial life.

There have been numerous stories surrounding this theoryry, both claiming a new dawn in science and all the potential benefits associated with it — but also a range of concerns and claims that science is playing god.

But unless you rooted around beneath the surface it was actually quite difficult to work out what had actually been done.

So what have the scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute actually done?

The work is part of a long-running research theme which started with the sequencing of the whole genome of a bacterium.

The genome of an organism is the entirety of its hereditary information which in bacteria and higher organisms, such as man, coded in DNA.

The sequencing of a genome involves taking the DNA and identifying the order of the base pairs present.

In DNA, there are four bases involved, with adenine pairing with thymine and guanine pairing with cytosine.

Genomes range in size with the human genome being composed of billions of base pairs.

Bacterial genomes are much smaller and the sequencing of bacterial genomes raised the question of what is the smallest number of genes needed for an organism to function independently.

The smallest bacterial genome is around 160,000 base pairs but these belong to a symbiotic bacteria found within some insects.

The smallest free living bacterial genome identified belongs to Mycoplasma genitalium.

The interest in the smallest possible genome is not purely scientific curiosity, the smaller the genome the easier it may be to copy and manipulate it to commercial ends.

The commercial interest in an organism with a very small genome is that the smaller the genome, the easier it is likely to be to modify that genome externally, allowing genomes to be designed to produce products of interest.

This would be accomplished by adding genes into the bacteria that code for valuable products such as vaccines or which allow the bacteria to perform specific functions such as degrading pollutants.

The work reported by the institute represents a significant step towards this future.

What these scientists did was to take the DNA sequence of a bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides to a lab and have the DNA synthesized into a number of sections of DNA.

They then used yeast cells to put these sections together into a complete bacterial genome. The complete genome was then isolated and inserted into the cells of another Mycoplasma spore that had its own genome disabled.

This allowed the new genome to take over these cells and reproduce.

The resulting bacteria can be considered artificial in that the genome they contain was manufactured in a laboratory.

However, it’s important to remember that this genome was copied from a living organism, and consequently is not life created from scratch, rather it is life copied from life.

This development does represent a significant step forward in genetic engineering providing an alternative method to those currently being used.

There are claims in the press that this approach will allow bacteria to be engineered to solve many of the world’s ills. It sounds too good to be true in reality.

But one thing that’s certain is that this is the beginning of a new route for the commercialisation of life which will certainly grow and is likely to impact on many aspects of our lives in the coming decades.