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【bio-news】人造生命不再是科幻想象
By Elizabeth Pennisi
ScienceNOW Daily News
24 January 2008
Researchers have rebuilt an entire genome from scratch, they report online today in Science. Although the team has yet to demonstrate that this DNA can substitute for the real thing, the work paves the way for customized bacteria that could efficiently produce drugs, biofuels, and other molecules useful to humankind.
Ever since his group decoded the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a parasitic bacterium that lives in the human urogenital tract, sequencing maverick J. Craig Venter has wanted to remake the bug's genome in the lab. At just under 600,000 bases, M. genitalium sports the smallest known genome for a free-living organism, and Venter hoped that an artificial genome could be modified to turn the bacterium into a living chemical-manufacturing plant.
Last year, Venter and his colleagues developed a technique for replacing M. genitalium's genome with another natural genome from a different species (Science, 3 August 2007, p. 632). But synthesizing the M. genitalium genome from the ground up proved challenging, in part because long strands of DNA are quite fragile.
Japanese researchers have built a large genome from two existing bacterial chromosomes. But Venter, Hamilton Smith, and their colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, started with short pieces of DNA that a company had manufactured base by base. About 6000 bases long, these pieces represented overlapping bits of the microbe's only chromosome. Some of the pieces also contained "watermarks": a few extra or different bases here and there that distinguish an artificial chromosome from a natural one.
To link the pieces, Smith and Venter's team used enzymes that allowed them to join longer and longer DNA strands until they had just four, each representing one-quarter of the genome. Finally, the team inserted these quarters into yeast, which copied and combined them into a complete chromosome. The researchers sequenced their newly constructed genome and, except for the watermarks, it matched M. genitalium's exactly. The work is "a technical tour de force" and a "monumental effort," says yeast biologist Jef Boeke of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. However, to be sure this genome works as it should, the researchers must still put it into a DNA-less M. genitalium, notes Eckard Wimmer, a molecular virologist at Stony Brook University in New York state: "Proof is biological function, and that's missing in this paper." 是不是可以认领翻译呀？（新手哈，多包涵，不懂就问呗！）
48小时后若未提交译文，请其他战友自由认领。 Scientists Synthesize a Genome From Scratch
科学家从零开始合成了基因组
By Elizabeth Pennisi
Science NOW Daily News
24 January 2008
Researchers have rebuilt an entire genome from scratch, they report online today in Science. Although the team has yet to demonstrate that this DNA can substitute for the real thing, the work paves the way for customized bacteria that could efficiently produce drugs, biofuels, and other molecules useful to humankind.
研究者在今天《科学》杂志的网络版报道，他们从零开始重建了完全基因组。尽管这个团队没有证明这个DNA可以替代已存在的基因，但是这项工作为定制细菌更有效的生产药物、生物燃料和其他对人来有用的分子铺平了道路。
Ever since his group decoded the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a parasitic bacterium that lives in the human urogenital tract, sequencing maverick J. Craig Venter has wanted to remake the bug's genome in the lab. At just under 600,000 bases, M. genitalium sports the smallest known genome for a free-living organism, and Venter hoped that an artificial genome could be modified to turn the bacterium into a living chemical-manufacturing plant.
自从这个组织解码了生殖器支原体—一种寄生在人类泌尿生殖道的细菌的基因组、序列测定后，J Craig Venter想在实验室内改造这种细菌的基因组。在600000例对已知最小基因组—生殖器支原体自由生活运动的研究后，Venter希望人造的基因组经过改良后能将这一细菌变为生产化学药品的工厂。
Last year, Venter and his colleagues developed a technique for replacing M. genitalium's genome with another natural genome from a different species (Science, 3 August 2007, p. 632). But synthesizing the M. genitalium genome from the ground up proved challenging, in part because long strands of DNA are quite fragile.
去年，Venter和他的同事发现了一种可以用另外不同种属的自然基因替换生殖器支原体基因组的技术(发表在《科学》2007年8月3日第632页)。但是从碾成粉的基因中合成生殖器支原体基因组是一种挑战，部分原因是长而弯曲的DNA非常脆弱。
Japanese researchers have built a large genome from two existing bacterial chromosomes. But Venter, Hamilton Smith, and their colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, started with short pieces of DNA that a company had manufactured base by base. About 6000 bases long, these pieces represented overlapping bits of the microbe's only chromosome. Some of the pieces also contained "watermarks": a few extra or different bases here and there that distinguish an artificial chromosome from a natural one.
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-07-04 18:05
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