In a major breakthrough in synthetic biology, a team of scientists from the United Kingdom led by Dr. Ben Blount from the University of Nottingham and Professor Tom Ellis from Imperial College London completed the construction of a chromosome (the chromosome (from the Greek word “khroma”), color and soma, body, element) is the synthetic element. This achievement is part of the international Sc2.0 project, which aims to create the world’s first genome of an individual or…) synthetic yeast.
This work, published in the journal Cell Genomics, represents the UK team’s completion of one of the 16 chromosomes of the yeast genome. The 15-year Sc2.0 project includes international teams (US, China, Singapore, France and Australia) working together, to synthesize the entire yeast chromosomes. Nine additional papers have been issued by different teams describing their synthetic chromosomes. The final completion of the project is scheduled for 2024.
This work represents the first construction of a synthetic genome in a eukaryote, a living organism with a nucleus, such as animals, plants and fungi. Yeast, chosen for its relatively compact genome size and innate ability to assemble DNA, allows researchers to construct synthetic chromosomes in their cells.
Human history with yeast dates back thousands of years and has been used for bread making, brewing, chemical production and as a model organism. These factors made yeast an ideal candidate for this project.
The British team reported the completion of their chromosome, synthetic chromosome XI, which consists of about 660,000 base pairs. This chromosome replaces a natural yeast chromosome and allows the cell to grow with the same fitness level as a natural cell. The synthetic genome will help understand how genomes work and will have many possible applications.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, SEM image.
Photo credit: Mogana Das Murtey and Patchamuthu Ramasamy/CC BY-SA 3.0
Rather than simply copying the natural genome, the synthetic Sc2.0 genome has been endowed with new features that give cells capabilities never before seen in nature. One of these characteristics forces cells to mix their genetic content, creating millions of different versions with different properties. These cells could be used in medical applications, bioenergy (bioenergy arises from the process of recovering energy from biomass when…) and biotechnology (the OECD defines biotechnology as “the application of the principles…”). The team also showed that their chromosome can serve as a new system to study extrachromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA), which is involved in aging, malignant growth and resistance to chemotherapy treatments in several types of cancer.
Project collaborators also include scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh, Cambridge, Manchester, Johns Hopkins University, New York University (New York University: NYU,…), Langone Health and the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Querétaro.
Originally posted 2023-11-18 07:34:24.