First Ever 'Synthetic Life' Grown in Lab

Genetically modified organisms are so last century. Today, it’s all about creating totally new forms of life. Craig Venter, lead scientist at the J. Craig Venter Institute, says he’s done it.

Un-sexily christened Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and nicknamed "Synthia," the life form is the first ever self-replicating organism made of 100 percent man-made DNA. It is “the world’s first synthetic cell,” says Venter, who has spent $40 million during the decade-long project. The milestone was announced in the journal Science on Thursday.

Resembling tiny blue orbs under a microscope, the new organism wasn’t built completely from scratch. It’s made up of the shell of a Mycoplasma capricolum, a tiny bacteria found in the lungs of sheep and cattle, and a chromosome of genes coded by a computer program and edited by Venter’s team, that instruct every cell process, from metabolism to replication. It’s a big first step in the upstart field of synthetic biology.

Of course, the project has its critics. “This could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable,” Professor Julian Savulescu, expert in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, tells the Telegraph. While he’s correct, Venter hopes to use the new technology for good. His company has already been awarded a $600 million contract from Exxon Mobil to design fuel-producing algae. In the future, the technique may be used to create designer organisms that consume toxic waste, produce vaccines, or make our lives better in a way we can’t even imagine.

But maybe the coolest thing about Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 is what’s buried within its genetic code. Venter, lead researcher Daniel G. Gibson and his team have encrypted their names, a private email address, and three choice quotes into the organism’s DNA. The English text, or “watermark,” according to the team, ensures nobody confuses its life form for something created by nature. It also gives enterprising scientists a mystery to solve: decode the cell’s genetic code and you’ll find the email address to prove it.

As for the quotes? They were too handy to keep hidden from the public: Physicist Richard Feynmann’s “what I cannot build, I cannot understand;” Robert Oppenheimer’s “see things not as they are but as they might be;” and James Joyce’s “to live, to err, to fall, to triumph, and to recreate life out of life.”

Photo by Idb2120 via Flickr.