Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome (2016)

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad6253

by sebg • 3 years ago

59 6 3 years ago

I remember reviewing this paper with my lab when it was published! Very interesting work

XorNot2• 3 years ago

Makes you wonder if there's a possible set of RNA enzymes which could be isolated exist would be able to bootstrap the cytoplasmic environment as well.

The ultimate experiment would obviously be to go from a surfactant micelle in an amino acid soup to a functional cell synthesizing proteins using just genetic code or code precursors.

samus• 3 years ago

That experiment probably can't be run end-to-end because evolution took an enormous time to cook up our biochemistry from the primordial soup. I could also be completely wrong, and we learn that simplistic cells can arise on short timescales if there is no competition from existing life.

XorNot2• 3 years ago

My thought was that if you just intentionally dumped the working components into the relevant areas, you would get a cell in short order - i.e. there's a combination of RNAzymes which must've existed on the transition from RNA-world to proteins, to DNA coding.

Basically: evolution trial and error'd, but it stands to reason that we could just sit there injecting the next step which worked each time.

mfld• 3 years ago

A 2022 review on synthetic genomics from the same team is to be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.06.046 .

flobosg• 3 years ago

Follow-up study tracking the evolution of this minimal cell: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06288-x

Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome (2016)

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