Scientists recode entire genome of organism: The dawn of synthetic biology?

October 21, 2013

Like editors trying to improve a poorly-written book, a team of scientists deleted some ‘letters,’ and inserted others, working feverishly to recode the entire genome of an organism. In so doing, they improved a bacterium’s ability to resist viruses. “This is the first time the genetic code has been fundamentally changed,” Farren Isaacs, assistant professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale, stated in a press release. “Creating an organism with a new genetic code has allowed us to expand the scope of biological function in a number of powerful ways.” The research, conducted by scientists in laboratories at Yale and Harvard in the emerging field known as ‘synthetic biology,’ will be published tomorrow in the journal Science. (Medical Daily)