* Photo: Lamosca * Last time Wired caught up with J. Craig Venter, he was tooling around the South Pacific, collecting microbes and dreaming of hatching life from man-made DNA (August 2004). This year, the biologist took a giant leap when his team engineered a synthetic version of a real organism's entire genetic code. Venter picked M. genitalium, a bacterium with one of the smallest nonviral genomes on the planet — just 582,970 base pairs. Here's how they did it:
1 // Venter's team sequenced M. genitalium's DNA to create a blueprint. (The code was later tweaked so the bacterium wouldn't be infectious.)
2 // They then ordered short, custom-made DNA sequences (fewer than 7,000 base pairs each) from specialized biotech firms.
3 // To assemble the delicate crystalline strands of DNA, the scientists harnessed the genetic material of E. coli as a host, resulting in fragments one-quarter the length of the total genome.
4 // Brewer's yeast was added to stitch together the four final strands. Then enzymes were used to remove the yeast. Later this year, the lab plans to boot up the genome inside a cell. Venter claims his work is the precursor to man-made critters designed to, say, make fuel or consume CO2.