‘Minimal’ cell raises stakes in race to harness synthetic life

CLIMATE Model forecasts tipping point for Antarctic ice p.562 HUMAN BEHAVIOUR How to make computer gamers be kind online p.568 BIOTECHNOLOGY Race to design life heats up Craig Venter's minimal-cell triumph comes as the CRISPR gene-editing method provides alternative ways to tinker with life's building blocks. G enomics entrepreneur Craig Venter has created a synthetic cell that contains the smallest genome of any known, independent organism. Functioning with 473 genes, the cell is a milestone in his team's 20-year quest to reduce life to its bare essentials and, by extension , to design life from scratch. Venter, who has co-founded a company that seeks to harness synthetic cells for making industrial products, says that the feat heralds the creation of customized cells to make drugs, fuels and other products. But an explosion in powerful 'gene-editing' techniques, which enable relatively easy and selective tinkering with genomes, raises a niggling question: why go to the trouble of making new life forms when you can simply tweak it? Unlike the first synthetic cells made in 2010 (ref. 1), in which Venter's team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, California, copied an existing bacterial genome and transplanted it into another cell, the genome of the minimal cells is like nothing in nature. Venter says that the cell, which is described in a paper released on 24 March in Science 2 , constitutes a brand-new, artificial species. " The idea of building whole genomes is one of the dreams and promises of synthetic biology , " says Paul Freemont, a synthetic biologist at Imperial College London who is not involved in the work. Synthetic biologist Craig Venter, whose team embarked on its quest to whittle life down to its bare essentials two decades ago.