Mysterious tiny germs: US scientists ‘build’ bacteria with smallest genome on Earth

“Our attempt to design and create a new species, while ultimately successful, revealed that 32% of the genes essential for life in this cell are of unknown function, and showed that many are highly conserved in numerous species. All the bioinformatics studies over the past 20 years have underestimated the number of essential genes by focusing only on the known world. This is an important observation that we are carrying forward into the study of the human genome,” said Dr. Venter, Founder, Executive Chairman, and CEO, JCVI.

The research to construct the first minimal synthetic cell at JCVI was the culmination of 20 years of research that began in 1995 after the genome sequencing of the first free-living organism, Haemophilus influenza, followed by the sequencing of Mycoplasma genitalium. A comparison of these two genomes revealed a common set of 256 genes which the team thought could be a minimal set of genes needed for viability. In 1999 Dr. Hutchison led a team who published a paper describing the use of global transposon mutagenesis techniques to identify the nonessential genes in M. genitalium.