Where Form 8854 Streamlined 2023-2024

In 2010, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had created a bacteria that runs entirely on lab-made DNA - the world's first synthetic life-form. More than five years later, they have streamlined, stripped down, and organized that life-form and are ready to turn it into a tiny factory. The team's 2010 announcement made headlines around the world. "This is the first self-replicating species that we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer," said one researcher. However, creating a life-form entirely programmed by humans was also seen as kind of scary. "This has enormous promise and enormous peril," warned another researcher. The process of making DNA in a lab has only gotten easier since then. Some of those same researchers now sell DNA printing machines. The plan, though, has always been to strip down a genome to its bare essentials - cutting out every piece of unnecessary DNA. This would serve two goals - helping scientists learn more about how life works and taking the first steps to build custom bacteria. On the first point, it turns out we don't know life nearly as well as we thought. A viable life-form needs at least 473 genes, which is way higher than scientists predicted. And they still aren't sure what a third of those genes do. The team says that even if this research only shows us how little we know, it would still be worth it. But they don't intend to stop there. They want to put this streamlined life-form to work. Bacteria are great at taking one compound and turning it into another. They are like little chemistry labs. Many scientists believe that using carefully built bacteria can solve a lot of the world's problems. Bacteria can turn switchgrass into biofuel as easily as brewing...