A New Synthetic Cell

Scientists may have created the first "synthetic cell."
ABC World News (5/20, story 4, 2:30, Sawyer) reported, "World renowned geneticist Craig Venter" and a team of researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute have "created life from nonliving parts." That is, they developed "the first synthetic cell." Dr. Venter explained, "Instead of having a genetic relative that it evolved from, the parent of this cell is a computer."
It is possible that one day, such cells "will make up designer organisms that can be programmed to do specific tasks like creating new biofuels or breaking down oil," CBS Evening News (5/20, story 3, 0:30, Couric) reported.
The breakthrough stems from a step that was taken approximately three years ago, when Dr. Venter was able to show that "the natural DNA from one bacterium could be inserted into another and that it would take over the host cell's operation," the New York Times (5/21, A17, Wade) reports. In 2009, "his team synthesized a piece of DNA with 1,080,000 bases." Now, according to the paper in Science, the team has found that the "synthetic DNA takes over a bacterial cell just as the natural DNA did, making the cell generate the proteins specified by the new DNA's genetic information in preference to those of its own genome."
In other words, the "donor genome reprogrammed the recipient cell, which went on to replicate and divide," the Washington Post (5/21, Brown) reports. "The result was new colonies of Mycoplasma mycoides." Notably, the "man-made copy of the genome that Mycoplasma mycoides produces naturally" was "not an exact duplicate," as 14 "of the bacterium's 850 genes were altered or deleted during the experiment -- 12 intentionally, two accidentally." The Los Angeles Times (5/21, Maugh, Roan), Time (5/20, Park), the Wall Street Journal (5/21, A1, Hotz), and NPR (5/20, Palca) also covered the story.