New Scientist reports that the world's first truly artificial organism has been engineered by researchers at California's Scripps Institute, using "stolen" genes from other bacteria and from the sperm whale.
The bacterium makes an amino acid that no other organism uses to build proteins. The work is being hailed as "a very great accomplishment" and the technique promises to open unique avenues for manufacturing drugs.
Amino acids are the fundamental building blocks of life, making up the proteins which constitute all living cells. The DNA of every organism on Earth contains three-letter codes, known as codons, for 20 such amino acids. Now, a team led by Peter Schultz of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla has managed to coax E. coli bacteria to produce a 21st amino acid and use it to make a protein, using only natural food sources such as sugar and water.
