Scientists Downsize Bold Plan to Make Human Genome from Scratch

May 1, 2018

(Scientific American) – A bold plan to synthesize an entire human genome has been scaled back, aiming at a more technically attainable near-term goal. Instead of synthesizing all of the human genome’s 3 billion DNA base pairs, the project will now attempt to recode the genome to produce cells immune to viral infection. Organizers of Genome Project–Write (GP-write), a global public–private partnership that includes around 200 scientists, announced the priority shift at a meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, on 1 May.