How to Build a Genome

February 24, 2020

(Nature) – Only a handful of genomes have been synthesized so far, mostly for bacteria. Synthetic biologist Jason Chin and his colleagues at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, have rewritten the genome of Escherichia coli, and researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in La Jolla, California, have constructed a ‘minimal’ genome for Mycoplasma mycoides, which has all non-essential genes deleted. Sc2.0 will synthesize the first genome of a eukaryote (a cell that has a nucleus enclosed within a membrane), and marks a huge advance in the engineering and assembly of DNA sequences.