On the way to Synthetic Life

Less than two years ago at the Craig J Venter Institute, the homonymus founder of the Center, announced to the World that Synthia, the first synthetic organism, was created into their labs.

Of course, this event got a lot of visibility from the mass media all around the World, since the humankind has never achieved this big step that put it in a market until now just businnes of one actor: God.

But let's analyze with more attention what the Craig Venter's band really performed and, for doing this, we just begin with the initial part of the press conference he gave in the june of the 2010:

"We're here today to announce the first synthetic cell, a cell made by starting with the digital code in the computer, building the chromosome from four bottles of chemicals, assembling that chromosome in yeast, transplanting it into a recipient bacterial cell and transforming that cell into a new bacterial species. So this is the first self-replicating species that we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer. It also is the first species to have its own website encoded in its genetic code."

Hence, they have started to design the primary sequence of the future Synthia genome in the computer and in this step there is a very important key of reading of the overall procedure. In fact the researchers at the Venter Institute for their synthetic organism have mimed the genetic information of one natural bacterium M. mycoides. This is the blueprint of Synthia is always a natural-one and it was shaped from natural selection since millions of years.  So its real parent is not a computer at all and to avoid any kind of mislead we should talk of semi-synthetic life...

By the way the Venter's group performed a minimization of the M. mycoides genome by the knock-out of dispensable genes (about 100 over 485 genes) in order to obtain a bacterial with the smallest set of genes of any known organism capable of indipendent grow in lab (Wow!).

 The second challenging step was to assembly the (semi-)synthetic chromosome in yeast and without any doubts in the semantic field this  rapresents a very innovative and elegant procedure

They than performed the biggest cloning ever made  assembling a very huge DNA string (1.08 Mkb!!!) by combination of in vitro enzymatic methods and in vivo recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Schematic experimental procedure

Once accomplished the production of the (semi-)synthetic chromosome of M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0,  the construct was transfered in another bacterium,  M. capricolum, which acted as recipient. 

What does it mean? From a technical point if view it means that the assembled new chromosome were moved into the membrane-boundary of another bacterium deprived of own-genome, in order to get  M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 in the condition to start to be alive. But at the same time this means, again, that maybe could be much more intellectually correct talking about semi-synthetic...

Anyway the achivements of this controversial biologist and his group is a millestone in the road toward the real synthetic era (thanks to the people as Craig Venter not so far from now), when we will able to program in front of a computer the desiderable traits of an organism and gain from their inimaginable potential.

Follow the Chain Reaction

Before the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) the life for a biologist was so hard.

We can just imagine the way of dealing of a resercher before start an experiment with the few picomoles of DNA (10 to minus 12 mole of DNA)...scare and anxiety of loosing the precious sample maybe fruit of the previous weeks of work.

But fortunatly, one evening in the spring 1983, the breakthrough appeared.

Kary Mullis, a chemist working at that time for a private company, was driving his Honda from San Francisco to Mendocino, with his girlfriend and collegue, in order to enjoy a cabin week-end. In the meanwhile he is completely immersed in his thoughts about some experimental tricks that always tormented the lame life of a researchers, when... .

"But... wait a moment... not it is no possible... maybe someone already tried something similar... but I have never heard something about it before..."

Suddenly his mind was involved in the flux of brain that will revolutionized the way to do molecular biology,  biochemistry and medicine. And of course which will bring him to Stockholm.

In fact in this car, Kary Mullis started to figure out the PCR, a molecular reaction inspired to what happen normally in Nature, that allows to the todays researcher to count on a major amount of DNA for their lab routine and to start to perform all of series of different researches (Genomic Sequencing, DNA Cloning, Synthetic Biology, ecc.) inaccesible before the introduction of PCR.

The key aspect of the PCR reaction is the simplicity and the rapidity for the production of consistent quantity of DNA. It is based on cycles of temperatures alternation and on the use of an enzyme able to retain an activity in those temperature sudden jumps.  And of course Nature already knew a good guy for this job: the DNA Polymerase of Thermophilus aquaticus.  In fact this bacterium can live at high temperature and consequently also its molecular machine retains activity at such temperatures.

So, after performing  twenty or more cycles of PCR you can achieve the exponential amplification of your initial DNA sample with the possibility of carry out a series of investigations inimmaginable before!

Ok, everything sounds like a weird discovery made by a weird lab rat.

But the whole image of Kary Mullis get in another frame when we consider his biography-like best seller, Dancing naked in the mind fild.

The Nobel Prize Kary Mullis ready to surf some nice waves

In this book, Mullis explores all the Science panorama, from the climatic change to the AIDS, from the neurobiology to the biotechnology until dealing with some borderline scientific issues, as the extraterrestrial life and the telephaty. Everything dressed with some LSD experiences and surf session that make the all story much more catchy and intriguer.

Hence,  the first post of this new scientific blog by Bamboo Prodution is dedicated to Kary Mullis, a scientist which made possible the last shift of paradigm, at least from a technical point of view, in the Life Science and which with his extravagance deserves one of the honorous citizenship of ScientiaBilly community!

And at the same time such post is in honour of PCR it-self, which makes our everydays lab life not so shitty as it could have been without this  mix of oligos, nucleotides , salt and enzyme!

P.S.: Enjoy, but could be very hard, our music playlist about Chain Reaction!