Researchers have now created the world's first synthetic functional chromosome in yeast. The work of this synthesis of the eukaryotic chromosome
was done by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center's Institute for
Systems Genetics. This new chromosome is called SynIII and has approximately 273,871
base pairs of DNA compared to the 316,667 base pairs present in biological
yeast. Researchers said certain parts of the chromosome that were considered
unnecessary such as repeating segments of the DNA, junk DNA and jumping genes
were all removed during the synthesis of the chromosome.
The next step in the research is to synthesize larger
chromosome and maybe construct an artificial genome of an organism. The designer chromosome has a few different applications.
It can be used to improve production of alcohol, butanol, and biodiesel. In Pharmaceutical industry, bugs with
artificial chromosomes could produce drug components, according to the
researchers.
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