The folks at the Craig Venter Institute, having patented the technology for creating a synthetic organism, now have at least part of the process working: they report that they can take an entire bacterial genome from one organism and pop it into another, essentially “re-booting” the cell as a new species. The next step, obviously, is to synthesize a custom genome that does something you find worthwhile (digests some nasty chemical, if you’re feeling eco-conscious…or produces a nasty chemical, if you’re feeling more war-like), and create your own bacteria.
One interesting thing (from a methodological standpoint) about this procudre is that it appears to involve inducing the fusion of the two cells (the researchers don’t actually know; they just see the outcome), making it somewhat similar to procedures for creating hybrid cell types in mammals. It’s something of an unexpected connection between bacterial transformation and cell fusion.
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