Venter’s Man-Made Genome: Blessing or Curse?
In May of 2010, a group of scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), led by, you guessed it, J.
Craig Venter, announced that they had created the first organism from a completely synthetic
genome. Its genome was designed by a computer, synthesized in a lab, and transplanted in a
recipient cell. Heralded as a breakthrough by most in the scientific community, the concept of
artificial life has not been without controversy. Many have raised questions as to whether humans
should be “creating life”, and if it would constitute “playing God”. Moreover, this nascent technology
has engendered fears that it could be exploited for unscrupulous ends. All this and more shall be
discussed in the following paper.
So, how did Venter accomplish this incredible feat? Well, to start, he and his team sequenced
completely the genome of a simple microorganism called Mycoplasma mycoides, a parasite that lives
inside ruminants. They then synthesized a completely artificial copy of that genome using, as Venter
calls it, "four bottles of chemicals", or more accurately, the four nucleobases found in DNA and RNA:
adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine. The team's copy was nearly identical to M. mycoides' save for a
few phrases they transcribed in the DNA as "watermarks". These phrases were put in to distinguish
the synthetic DNA from the wild type M. mycoides DNA and included the names of 46 key
contributors to the project, a website address, and three philosophical quotations. Made of 1.08
million base pairs, it is nearly twice the length of Venter's 2008 genome, and for the first time,
completely synthetic. The recipient cell used was an emptied-out shell of a Mycoplasma capricolum.
Once the synthetic M. mycoides DNA was transplanted into the M. capricolum, the cell started
behaving like a normal M. mycoides, producing proteins encoded in its DNA and reproducing on its
own, replicating over a billion times since it was first synthesized. However, since it is an exact replica
of a wild type M. mycoides, some have refrained from calling this
new organism “artificial life”, instead comparing it to a clone.
Needless to say, ethical issues have risen with the rise of synthetic
life. Among those are environmental impact, human testing, and
even deliberate misuse. The environmental damage that the
creation of synthetic life could potentially cause is unprecedented.
What if a sample of artificially engineered organisms was
accidentally released into the biosphere to interact freely with wild
organisms? There would be tremendous, unforeseen consequences.
Though suicide genes would be inserted in the transplanted DNA, effectively acting as a “kill switch”,
the self-replicating nature of these organisms mean that mutations could render these controls
futile. Then there is the issue of bioterrorism, which would doubtless be deadlier than any plane or
bomb. Since these organisms can be synthesized to perform theoretically any task, they can be
designed to target a specific genetic sequence (i.e. a specific person or group of people), while
leaving another genetic sequence unharmed, virtually protecting whomever controls the organism.
In recent months, there has been talk that scientists at the JCVI are close to creating synthetic life
from scratch, meaning without the recipient cell. No journal has published any research on this as
yet, although Venter has confirmed that his team is “close” to accomplishing this feat. Dubbed the
“Hail Mary Genome”, this genome’s significance may not be immediately apparent. However, it may
be the first step towards truly synthetic organisms, as this genome’s components would be fully
known to man, making its manipulation a far easier feat for genetic engineers. It would be simply a
template, a chassis, which can then be fitted with any “machine” to make it operate in a desirable
way. The possibilities are endless: bacteria that can synthesize pharmaceuticals, or produce energy
sustainably, or clean up oil spills with nearly no damage to the environment.
Conclusively, this new discovery constitutes a great advancement in the fields of synthetic biology
and genetic engineering, and will surely bring with it great benefits, albeit with a few risks.
References:
1.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/07/08/synthetic-biology-creating-new-forms-of-life/
2.
http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cellconstructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/
3.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=synthetic-genome-cell
4.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-05-24/science/28301741_1_genome-synthetic-life-j-craig-venter
5.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
6.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.255.html