To pin down the indispensable elements of life, researchers led by DNA-sequencing pioneer Craig Venter said Thursday they’ve created bacteria with the smallest known genome of any freely living organism—a creature stripped to the barest genetic essentials required for existence.
Deceptively simple, the streamlined cell contains just 473 genes, compared with 30,000 or so required for human life, yet almost a third of them are mysterious, with unknown functions. Some parasites do get by with fewer genes but can’t live on their own. More than a laboratory curiosity, the organism could serve as a tool to explore the core functions of life and, eventually, as an energy-efficient production platform for more complex customized life-forms useful in medicine and industry, the researchers said.
“In theory, we could add gene sets and change this genome and essentially create any organism ultimately,” said Dr. Venter, chairman of the biotechnology company Synthetic Genomics Inc. in La Jolla, Calif., and CEO of the nonprofit J. Craig Venter Institute. “It would be a very important experimental tool.”
Whatever its scientific merits, the accomplishment has huge historic significance, said biomedical ethicist Arthur Caplan at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “It brings to an end that notion that there is something special that animates life,” he said. “It does suggest that life can be reduced to a molecular formula.”
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