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Scientists are still working on developing the first synthetic yeast genome in the world.
STATES CHRONICLE – A group of scientists from the International Synthetic Yeast Genome Project is closer to developing the first synthetic yeast genome in the world. They have recently announced that they completed the de novo redesign and had synthesized five more Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosomes. Researchers also developed a multi-dimensional, in-depth examination on the yeast strain.
Thus, they managed to determine that the phenotype of the newly developed synthetic yeast strain is similar to the one present in the wild type of strain. One of the Chinese researchers has conducted the redesign to completion and has also led the synthesis of the chromosome II. This chromosome is known to be 770 kilobase pair long. Scientists transformed it into a yeast cell which resulted in a synthetic strain.
This one is part of the wild type one when it comes to viability. The new study was published on March 9th in the Science magazine. The project was named Sc2.0, and it is known to be a new outstanding project in synthetic genomics research. The project consists in a consortium of many leading yeast laboratories located in Australia, Singapore, France, China, UK, and the USA.
Its primary purpose is to develop the first synthetic yeast genome until 2018. Chinese researchers received support from the National High Technology Research and Development Program and, thus, they managed to bring a significant contribution to the project. They all come from three different Chinese institutions, like Tsinghua University, Tianjin University, and BGI.
Prof, Jef D. Boeke, the leader, and initiator if the Sc2.0 project claimed that their Chinese colleagues from the three leading Chinese institutions had significantly contributed to the new project. Prof. Boeke also noted that the resources used to bear on this complex project, regarding human capital in the form of knowledgeable scientist, state of the art facilities and grant support, are outstanding.
The Chinese institution BGI, which is part of the Chinese team, has led the chromosome II synthesis process. They applied a “Trans-Omics” approach to determine the correlation between phenotype and genotype of the synthetic yeast strain at the metabolomics, proteomic, transcriptomic, genomic and phenotypic level.
Yue Shen, the director of the Genome Synthesis and Editing Platform at the China National GeneBank, argued that the Sc2.0 project offers scientists the opportunity to collaborate with international teams to learn more about genome synthesis.
Image courtesy of: wikipedia
