Aggregated News
A team led by J. Craig Venter, the scientist who headed a private effort to map the human genome in the 1990s, succeeded in morphing one kind of bacteria into another, edging closer to the creation of artificial life.
Venter and his colleagues outwitted the bacterial immune system that had stymied their previous efforts and produced a new form of bacteria “that had not previously existed,” the team reported in the journal Science. They used an ordinary yeast cell as a holding tank to alter the bacteria’s genetics.
The technology may help scientists radically modify the DNA of other existing organisms to create environmentally friendly biofuels or remove carbon from the atmosphere. Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil company, said July 14 it would invest more than $600 million to make fuels from algae with Synthetic Genomics Inc., a closely held San Diego-based company founded by Venter.
“These are new variations of existing life forms and they can be very, very useful,” Eckard Wimmer, a professor of molecular genetics at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York, said...
Venter and his colleagues outwitted the bacterial immune system that had stymied their previous efforts and produced a new form of bacteria “that had not previously existed,” the team reported in the journal Science. They used an ordinary yeast cell as a holding tank to alter the bacteria’s genetics.
The technology may help scientists radically modify the DNA of other existing organisms to create environmentally friendly biofuels or remove carbon from the atmosphere. Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil company, said July 14 it would invest more than $600 million to make fuels from algae with Synthetic Genomics Inc., a closely held San Diego-based company founded by Venter.
“These are new variations of existing life forms and they can be very, very useful,” Eckard Wimmer, a professor of molecular genetics at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York, said...