From: "Randy H" 

This Month's Wired goes over this stuff with varying degrees of detail.

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:43a9f935$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> We may soon have the answer to  - will simply synthesizing a chemical
> sequence spark life? Although it appears they still have the chicken-egg
> conundrum to overcome
>
>
>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051219.wxlife19/BNStory/
specialScienceandHealth/
>
> Work on the world's first human-made species is well under way at a
> research complex in Rockville, Md., and scientists in Canada have been
> quietly conducting experiments to help bring such a creature to life.
>
> Robert Holt, head of sequencing for the Genome Science Centre at the
> University of British Columbia, is leading efforts at his Vancouver lab to
> play a key role in the production of the first synthetic life form -- a
> microbe made from scratch.
>
> The project is being spearheaded by U.S. scientist Craig Venter, who
> gained fame in his former job as head of Celera Genomics, which completed
> a privately-owned map of the human genome in 2000.
>
> Dr. Venter, 59, has since shifted his focus from determining the chemical
> sequences that encode life to trying to design and build it: "We're going
> from reading to writing the genetic code," he said in an interview.
>
> The work is an extreme example of a burgeoning new field in science known
> as synthetic biology. It relies on advances in computer technology that
> permit the easy assembly of the chemical bits, known as nucleotides, that
> make up DNA.
>
> Several scientific groups are trying to make genes that do not exist in
> nature, in hopes of constructing microbes that perform useful tasks, such
> as producing industrial chemicals, clean energy or drugs. Dr. Venter and
> his colleagues are pushing the technology to its limits by trying to put
> together an entirely synthetic genome.
>
> "We have these genetic codes that we have been determining, so part of the
> proof [that they encode an organism] is reproducing the chromosome and
> seeing if it produces the same result," he said.
>
> Government and scientific bodies in the U.S. have investigated safeguards
> for the new technology, given its potential to yield new pathogens as
> weapons of bioterror. Ethicists have raised concerns about humans altering
> the "nature of nature."
>
> But proponents feel the many benefits of redesigning micro-organisms to do
> human bidding far outweigh the risks.
>
> The Venter team is starting small, working to construct a simpler version
> of the bacteria known as Mycoplasma genitalium, a common resident of the
> human reproductive tract. They hope to determine the minimum number of
> genes required to breathe life into an organism.
>
> M. genitalium is a single-cell bacterium with just one chromosome and 517
> genes. But the Venter team is paring the recipe down and believes their
> version will be able to survive with as few as 250 to 400 genes -- each of
> which they are making themselves, one chemical piece at a time.
>
> "I grew up doing that with cars and clocks and radios and things like
> that," Dr. Venter said. "You take them apart to understand
them and then
> you try and see if you can reassemble them."
>
> But even if the team can assemble all of the bug's 500,000 DNA chemicals
> (roughly 35,000 has been the record so far), no one knows if the organism
> will be viable. Will simply synthesizing a chemical sequence spark life?
>
> "Nobody has ever done it before so absolutely it is a key hurdle," Dr.
> Venter said.
>
> Dr. Holt, a Vancouver native who worked in the United States with Dr.
> Venter until 2002, described it as a "chicken and egg" problem.
>
> "You need an egg to make the chicken, but you also need the chicken to
> make the egg," Dr. Holt said.
>
> "So the profound problem is what do you do with this DNA once you get it?
> How do you turn it into an actual organism? You need the genome to encode
> and make the organism.
>
> "But the way biology works, you need the organism to make the genome."
>
> Dr. Holt and his UBC group are tackling that very problem.
>
> One option for sparking life in a lab-made genome, he explained, is to
> transplant the synthetic DNA into the shell of an existing microbe. But
> unlike a human cell, the genetic material of bacteria is not neatly
> contained in one nucleus that can be removed and simply replaced with
> another.
>
> "Their chromosomal DNA is floating throughout the entire
organism," Dr.
> Holt said.
>
> So the Vancouver group is researching the use of high-voltage electricity
> to essentially zap open a host bacteria and slowly infuse it with small
> pieces of new DNA.
>
> No method exists to insert large DNA fragments. The UBC experiment
> involves breaking down the DNA of Haemophilus bacteria, a bug common to
> the upper respiratory tract, into 19 separate pieces and inserting it into
> the shell of an E. coli, commonly found in the human gut.
>
> "That's the strategy, though we don't know if it will work," Dr. Holt
> said.
>
> "I thought this was one of the most important problems and one that we
> should get working on here."
>
> The problem, Dr. Venter said, is worth solving first with bacteria.
>
> Having launched a company called Synthetic Genomics, Dr. Venter believes
> "the whole world is open" in terms of the commercial
applications of being
> able to build or redesign micro-organisms for specific tasks.
>
> He insists the main goal of his project to build the first synthetic life
> form, however, is to understand the essence of life, how it evolved and
> the essential elements that sustain it.
>
> "Here we are trying to understand the human genome with 24,000 some odd
> genes and 100 trillion cells and we don't know how 300 or 400 genes work
> together to yield a simple living cell," he said.
>
> "So if we ever have any hope of understanding our own genome, we need to
> start with something we can actually tear apart, break down and rebuild.
> So we're starting with a four-cylinder engine instead of a space shuttle."
>
>

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