An important step has been taken in the quest to create a synthetic lifeform. A US team reports in Science magazine how it built the entire DNA code of a common bacterium in the laboratory using blocks of genetic material. The group hopes eventually to use engineered genomes to make organisms that can produce clean fuels and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Publication of the research gives others the chance to scrutinise it. Some have ethical concerns. These critics have been calling for several years now for a debate on the risks of creating "artificial life" in a test tube. But Dr Hamilton Smith, who was part of the Science study, said the team regarded its lab-made genome - a laboratory copy of the DNA used by the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium - as a step towards synthetic, rather than artificial, life. He told BBC News: "We like to distinguish synthetic life from artificial life. "With synthetic life, we're re-designing the cell chromosomes; we're not creating a whole new artificial life system." Gene cassettes: The team of 17 scientists constructed the bacterial genome by chemically synthesising small blocks of DNA. These were grown up in a bacterium, and knitted together into bigger pieces, so-called "cassettes" of genes. The researchers ended up with several large chunks of DNA that were joined to make the circular genome of a synthetic version of Mycoplasma genitalium.They have named it Mycoplasma JCVI-1.0, after their research centre, the J Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD, US. Dr Craig Venter, who was involved in the race to decode the human genome, believes tailor-made micro-organisms can become efficient producers of non-polluting fuels such as hydrogen.
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