Can human beings create life? The very question seems sacrilege. Yet an August 20 BBC report (Victoria Gill, “A step closer to synthetic life”) indicates significant progress toward it.

At the J. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, MD., scientists have “successfully transferred the genome of one type of bacteria into a yeast cell, modified it, and then transplanted into another bacterium. This paves the way to the creation of a synthetic organism – inserting a human-made genome into a bacterial cell.” We are thus a step closer to altering and engineering the building block of life — the DNA inside our cells. The results were published in the journal SCIENCE.

Leading researcher Sanjay Vashee explained that:

…the work overcame a hurdle in the quest to create a fully synthetic organism. “Bacteria have ‘immune’ systems that protect them from foreign DNA such as those from viruses,” he explained. He and his colleagues managed to disable this immune system, which consists of proteins called restriction enzymes that home in on specific sections of DNA and chop up the genome at these points. Bacteria can shield their own genomes from this process by attaching chemical units called methyl groups at the points which the restriction enzymes attack. The scientists modified the original genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides, whilst it was inside the yeast cell. Then they either attached methyl groups to it, or inactivated the restriction enzyme of the recipient bacterium, before transplanting the genome into its new cell. 

In other words: Just as doctors use anti-rejection drugs on patients receiving organ transplants, so have the Venter scientists found ways to neutralize the cell’s own protection mechanism that rejects “foreign” DNA, by inactivating the appropriate protective enzymes. To do this, they first had to discover how cells reject foreign DNA.  

Venter remains a controversial figure. His work largely pioneered the decoding of the human genome, by mechanizing and automating the process, speeding it up by two orders of magnitude, at a time when conventional scientists doubted this approach and the government fought it or refused to fund it. 

Why do other scientists find the rather arrogant Venter so irritating? Perhaps, the BBC report notes, precisely because they cannot dispute the quality of his science or the creativity of his break-the-rules thinking. 

One of the Venter team’s ultimate aims is to transplant a fully synthetic genome into a bacterial cell – creating bacteria that can be programmed to carry out specific functions – for example, digesting biological material to produce fuel.