Self-Replicating Synthetic Life May 24, 2010

When I started medical school in 2003, we heard rumours about Craig Venter who was working on some sort of synthetic life and now I just saw the recent reports. An excerpt from Wired:

In a feat that is the culmination of two and a half years of tests and adjustments, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute inserted artificial genetic material — chemically printed, synthesized and assembled — into cells that were then able to grow naturally.

On a Friday in March, scientists inserted over 1 million base pairs of synthetic DNA into Mycoplasma capricolum cells before leaving for the weekend. When they returned on Monday, their cells had bloomed into colonies.