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Scientists reveal proposal to build human genome from scratch


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2016 Jun 2, 6:00pm   1,751 views  3 comments

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Scientists reveal proposal to build human genome from scratch. The Human Genome Project–Write would design human chromosomes from the ground up.

Last year, researchers working to synthesize the genome of a strain of yeast began to eye a much bigger prize: assembling from scratch the 3 billion base pairs of DNA that drive a human cell. The idea caught the attention of other prominent scientists, and inspired a proposal published online in Science today. The so-called Human Genome Project–Write (HGP-write) aims to synthesize entire genomes—of humans and other species—from their chemical components, and get them to function in living cells.

The initiative generated buzz last month after an invitation-only meeting to discuss the prospect at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Its organizers aimed to keep the details under wraps until this more formal proposal was published—a move that rankled those hoping for a broader public discussion about its ethical, legal, and social implications. Some speculated that scientists would use these engineered cells to create designer humans with no genetic parents.

The new proposal makes clear that HGP-write has no such aim, the authors say. The main goal instead is to drive down the cost of engineering large stretches of DNA and testing their activity in cells. “HGP-write would push current conceptual and technical limits by orders of magnitude,” the authors write.

That “learning by building” approach would put scientists’ understanding of the genome to the test, says chromosome biologist Torsten Waldminghaus of Philipp University of Marburg in Germany, who is not involved in the project. “You know all the parts needed [to make a chromosome], so you take these parts and rebuilt it,” he says. “If it’s functional, you see that you were right.”

Researchers have already constructed functioning viral and bacterial genomes, and the yeast genome project, known as Sc2.0, aims to have all 16 chromosomes—roughly 10 million base pairs—assembled by the end of next year. But a mammalian genome is a different prospect, says synthetic biologist Tom Ellis of Imperial College London, an Sc2.0 collaborator who attended the Harvard meeting. Researchers would need to choose an appropriate cell line to act as a host and then gradually swap out large chunks of its genome with the synthetic DNA. It’s not yet clear how best to physically shuttle this DNA into a mammalian cell, or how to design synthetic sequences that keep their host cell functioning normally. “How do you debug it if you’re throwing in a million bases at a time?” Ellis says. “That’s a lot of hunting.”

More: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/scientists-reveal-proposal-build-human-genome-scratch

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/02/480466940/scientists-say-they-hope-to-create-a-human-genome-in-the-lab

#science #genetics

Comments 1 - 3 of 3        Search these comments

1   Tenpoundbass   2016 Jun 2, 6:08pm  

Why so they can put it in our corn?

2   Heraclitusstudent   2016 Jun 2, 10:59pm  

They could look for a way to make people smarter. That would be a good start.

3   Ceffer   2016 Jun 2, 11:35pm  

They are going to make the human genome with just flour, eggs, water, sugar, salt, flavorings and some condiments? Wow, that is amazing!

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