Made an artificial organism capable of cell division and proliferation

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and JC Venture Institute announced that they have developed JCVI-syn3A, a single-cell synthetic artificial organism that divides and proliferates cells like normal cells.

This is not the first attempt to create artificial bacteria. JC Venter Research Institute created JCVI-syn1.0 in 2010, in which natural DNA was removed from bacteria that cause goat infection (Mycoplasma mycoides) and human-edited DNA was injected.

The research team also created JCVI-syn3.0 in 2016, based on JCVI-syn1.0, injecting DNA with only 473 gene information by reducing the nucleotide sequence to the minimum that can be proliferated in the experimental medium. JCVI-syn3.0 was able to continue proliferating cell division, but there was a problem in that the cell division was not normally performed and its shape changed greatly with each growth. Even if you look at the microscope image, you can see that the size is scattered.

The research team designed JCVI-syn3A, a single-celled synthetic organism that performs normal cell division by inhibiting morphological changes caused by proliferation by adding 19 kinds of gene information to JCVI-syn3.0.

According to the research team, there are only seven genes involved in performing the cell division process more consistently. Among them, the information on the two genes, ftsZ and sepF, has the function of changing the physical properties of the cell membrane to enable proper division. However, since it has not been fully elucidated how and which genes act in the cell division mechanism, the research team is making an elucidation of this as a subject of future research.

The research team is trying to clarify the basic design rules of life, and said that if the JCVI-syn3A helps clarify the design rules, it will take one more step. Related information can be found here.