Creating artificial life from 473 genes: a great step forward for humanity

This is a great step forward for biology, providing more understanding of the mysteries of evolutionary history, and opening up new directions in developing new generations of microorganisms, making medicines, fuels and many other fields in the future.

By comparison, the human body and fruit flies have over 20,000 genes. This discovery is therefore a major turning point in humanity’s understanding of biology. It could shed light on the mysterious story of how life evolved in the primordial oceans over 3 billion years ago. It could provide the basis for the formation of a new generation of organisms, specifically designed to produce antibiotics, new fuels and new drugs. Its applications extend to many other areas, including medicine, energy and climate change.

The new lab-created organism, which scientists call JCVI Syn3.0, has just 473 genes. Of these, 149 have unknown functions. It doubles in size every three hours in a petri dish. The study, published in the journal Science, was led by biologist J. Craig Venter, president of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland. Venter likened the process of identifying essential and nonessential genes to trying to disassemble a Boeing 777 to see how it works. “You can take the engines off the right wing, and see that it can fly and land,” he said in an interview. “You don’t realize that it’s essential,” until the left wing engine is also removed.

Craig Venter is considered the man who dared to 'challenge God' by creating artificial life on His behalf.

To achieve this new result, Venter’s team did not create life from scratch. Instead, they selected genes from an existing organism, a step forward from what they had done in a study published in the journal Science in 2010. Venter and his team synthesized chromosomes in a type of bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides. They then replaced the DNA of the Mycoplasma capricolum bacteria with a computer-designed synthetic gene, creating the new bacteria, which they named JCVI-syn1.0. At the time, it was the largest piece of DNA ever synthesized, and the first time that synthetic DNA had been synthesized precisely enough to replace a cell’s original DNA.

The next step was to determine the minimum number of genes necessary for life and replication. To do this, the researchers cut out genes from Syn 1.0 one by one, using what they knew at the time about which genes were considered essential for life. They created two new genomes using this method. However, the researchers failed to insert them into Mycoplasma capricolum cells.

In subsequent attempts, the team divided Syn 1.0’s 901 genes into eight parts, and began removing each part before reassembling the DNA and implanting it into a cell. If the cell died, they had removed something crucial. This experimental approach eventually led to Syn 2.0, a bacterium with fewer genes than any other living organism. And now Syn 3.0, with even fewer genes.

“It’s pretty incredible,” said Brett Baker, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who was not involved in the study. “They’re cataloging all the genes and figuring out which of them are essential for life, and that’s pretty amazing.” Baker said that essential genes with unknown functions are prime targets for future research. Syn 3.0 is clearly a “huge step forward” since the original study was published in 2010, said Christopher Voigt, a professor of bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While others have created minimal genomes in the past, and the technique isn’t new, Venter’s team’s method of synthesizing the cell’s DNA is simple but feasible.

After the new results were announced, or more accurately, after the results of the 2010 study were revealed, many people in the scientific community expressed concern about this type of artificial cell. They thought that when humans were able to create life in the laboratory, were we doing the work of the Creators? And then, what would happen next? Alistair Elfick, a bioengineer at the University of Edinburgh (UK), said: "Finding so many genes without identifying their functions is really worrying. But it is also very interesting because it makes us know that there is still much to learn. It is like the 'dark matter' of biology and we should not worry too much about it."

According to Tinhte.vn