As part of the Synthetic Yeast Genome Project, researchers have now created a yeast strain whose genome is more than half synthetic. The semi-synthetic strain is viable, grows slightly slower than natural yeast and can also reproduce.
The researchers recreated the 16 chromosomes of baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as brewer’s yeast or just germ; note) in the laboratory and introduced seven whole ones and half of them into living yeast cells. Because the largest and most gene-rich chromosome among these artificial genetic carriers is the germ, more than half of the genome of these ‘designer yeast cells’ consists of artificially produced DNA.
Severely altered chromosomes are produced
The synthetically produced yeast chromosomes are deliberately not just 1:1 copies of their natural counterparts, but rather highly modified and reduced to the essentials. “We felt it was important to develop something that deviated from nature’s design,” explains the leader of the Sythetic Yeast Genome Project, geneticist Jef Boeke of NYU Langone Health. “Our goal was to develop a yeast that would teach us new biology.”
The efforts, the results of which have been published in the journal ‘Science’, are part of the large-scale international research project that has been working for 17 years to develop a completely artificial germ. The genetic material of some bacteria and viruses has already been fully synthesized; brewer’s yeast is said to be the first eukaryote (this is the name given to living things whose cells have a real nucleus, note) with a designer genome.
Source: Krone
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