One of the better articles about Craig Venter’s new synthetic bacteria:
To distinguish their synthetic genome from the naturally occurring version, the researchers encoded a series of watermarks into the sequence. They began by developing a code for writing the English alphabet, as well as punctuation and numbers, into the language of DNA–a decoding key is included in the sequence itself. Then they wrote in their names, a few quotations, and the address for a website people can visit if they successfully crack the code.
The absence of these features in naturally occurring DNA is yet another argument against the intelligent design hypothesis.
The synthetic genome is an impressive feat of biology but I’m not sure its the breakthrough we’ve been hearing about. Recombinant DNA technology has been around for a while (the Nobel for it was awarded in 1978) and that gives you the ability to tailor make recombinant cells that express particular proteins. The tricky part isn’t modifying the DNA of the cells (we get our undergraduate students to do that in third year labs) but understanding the protein structure and interactions.
Building a cell that can replicate itself it pretty impressive but building a cell that can (say) be injected into a mammal without triggering an immune response is going to be much, much harder.