Controversial US geneticist Craig Venter has been given ethical approval and a government grant to build the first artificial bacterium.
Working with Nobel Prize-winning DNA expert Hamilton Smith, he plans to create a single-celled organism with the minimum number of genes to sustain life. The US Department of Energy has given the pair a $3 million, three-year grant to pay for the work at Venter鈥檚 new Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Maryland.
Venter first announced plans to create an artificial lifeform in 1999, but his team agreed to put the research on hold while the Ethics of Genomics Group conducted a review.
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The group of ethicists and religious leaders has now concluded that the project could be regarded as ethical, if the ultimate goal was to benefit mankind and if appropriate safeguards were followed. The panel was funded by an 鈥渦nrestricted鈥� grant from The Institute of Genome Research Foundation (TIGR), which Venter founded.
The work could reveal much about the evolution of life on Earth. But Venter said he also feared that publishing details of the technique could allow other scientists to create a formidable bioweapon by splicing genes from different deadly pathogens together inside the streamlined cell.
Monster bug
Mildred Cho, a bioethicist at Stanford University, California, who chaired the Ethics of Genomics Group, told the Washington Post: 鈥淚鈥檓 less worried about the minimal genome project taking off and creating some kind of monster bug than I would be, partly because I have a sense that the scientists are aware of the possible risks of what they鈥檙e doing,鈥�
Venter says his team might not publish all details of their work, to prevent its misuse. And they will take precautions to ensure the new bacterium cannot infect people, or survive outside laboratory conditions.
In July scientists synthesised the polio virus from basic chemical building blocks. But a virus requires a host to survive, whereas bacteria can live independently.
Stripped down
Creating an entirely artificial bacterium from basic chemicals is not possible using current techniques. So the new work will aim to assemble biological material into a living organism.
It will build on research by Clyde Hutchison at TIGR and the University of North Carolina. He gradually stripped down the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium, a very simple bug that lives in the human genital tract.
In 1999, he reported that the bacterium could survive with as few as 265 of the 517 genes it normally has. This set of genes could be thought of as the minimum set required to construct a living organism, Hutchinson reported.
Venter says his team will focus initially on M genitalium. They will remove all the genetic material from the bacterium then synthesise an artificial chromosome, which they hope will contain the minimum number of genes needed for life. They will then insert this chromosome back inside the cellular shell. If this project is successful, the next aim will be to add new functions to the basic organism.