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POPSSynthetic life - a step nearer Moreover, Dr. Venter’s team, led by a Nobel laureate, Hamilton O. Smith, has yet to accomplish the next — and biggest — step. That would be to insert the synthetic chromosome into a living microbe and have it “boot up” and take control of the organism’s functions. If that happened, it would be considered by some to be the creation of the first synthetic organism. The failure to achieve that tempered the reaction of some outside scientists to the announced achievement. “Right now, all they’ve done is shown they can buy a bunch of DNA and put it together,” said George M. Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Venter’s team last year reported successfully doing such a chromosome transplant, but it was with the natural genome of one type of Mycoplasma transplanted into another species of that bacterium. (NYT)
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