Playing 'God'? — Life Engineered by Man: First Fully Functional Yeast Chromosome Synthetically Designed

Illustration by KES47.

By Genetic Engineering News
An international team of scientists reports the synthesis of the first functional chromosome in yeast. They point out that this marks an important step in the emerging field of synthetic biology, designing microorganisms to produce novel medicines, raw materials for food, and biofuels.

Over the last five years, scientists have built bacterial chromosomes and viral DNA, but this is the first report of an entire eukaryotic chromosome built from scratch. “Our research moves the needle in synthetic biology from theory to reality,” says Jef Boeke, Ph.D., director of the NYU Langone Medical Center’s Institute for Systems Genetics. “This work represents the biggest step yet in an international effort to construct the full genome of synthetic yeast.”

According to Dr. Boeke, the yeast chromosome is the most extensively altered one ever built. But the milestone that really counts is integrating it into a living yeast cell. “We have shown that yeast cells carrying this synthetic chromosome are remarkably normal. They behave almost identically to wild yeast cells, only they now possess new capabilities and can do things that wild yeast cannot,” he noted.

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