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After another decade of work, a team of researchers has reached an important milestone in their life reengineering efforts, rebuilding the synthetic yeast chromosome (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) From your genome.
Investigators, led by a team from Macquarie University in Australia, chose the yeast as a way of demonstrating the potential for food production that can survive rigors of a moving climate or generalized diseases.
According to the, it is the First time a complete synthetic eukaryotic genome is builtfollowed by the successes obtained as simpler bacterial organisms. It is a proof of concept so that scientists can synthesize more complex organismslike food cultures.
“This is a striking moment in synthetic biology,” says Sakkie PretoriusMicrobiologist at Macquarie University. “It is the final piece of a puzzle that has been occupying researchers for many years. ”
This does not mean that we can start cultivate completely artificial yeasts from scratchbut it means that living yeast cells can potentially be fully recoded – although much more work is needed to refine and expanded before this can happen.
And a coding analogy is goodbecause the investigators had to spend a lot of time and effort in the debugging of 16th and last synthetic yeast chromosome (called Synxvi) Before the genome works as desired.
Several tools of gene editionlike a CRISPR based, to detect and correct chromosome problems. For example, it was necessary to make the yeast use the glycerol as a source of energy at higher temperaturessomething scientists could want to improve yeast resistance.
Another problem that the team exceeded was that of genetic markersused for identify and track the DNA within the genome. Placing these markers is important after all – if poorly placed you can interfere with cell behavior.
“One of our main findings was that the positioning of genetic markers was able to disturb the expression of essential genes,” Hugh GooldSynthetic Biologist at Macquarie University.
O SC2.0 Projectof which this investigation is part, it is not limited to modifying cultures. The same principles can also be applied to medicines and sustainable materialswith opportunities to accelerate their production or make them more resistant.
Efforts in the field of genetic engineering continue to become more ambitious and more comprehensive. Improvements are partly due to advances in technologies used-and information available in Australian Genome Foundry.
“The synthetic genome of yeast represents a quantum leap in our ability to create biology,” says Briardo Llorentesynthetic biologist, from Macquarie University. “This feat opens interesting possibilities for the development of more efficient and sustainable biophabric processesfrom the production of pharmaceutical products to the creation of new materials. ”
The results of the study were presented in a recently published in the Nature Communications.
Teresa Oliveira Campos, Zap //
