Genome Transplant!

Imagine the implications for the scientific world if a genome could be transplanted into an organism!
Apparently this is no longer a thing of science fiction movies. Researches have effectively turned one species of bacterium into another.
Craig Venter and his colleagues defined a minimal genome with less than 400 genes in a simple bacterium, M. Mycoides. The team then managed to transfer this genome to a parasite called M. Capricolum.
The proteins these organisms produced suggested that they completely transformed into M. Mycoides.
Basically in order to complete this process the researchers took a strain of M. Mycoides resistant to the antibiotic Tetracycline, broke open the cells and digested the proteins, leaving only the circular chromosomes containing the DNA.
These chromosomes were then incubated with M. Capricolum cells in a medium that encourages cell membranes to fuse. It is speculated that some M. Capricolum cells fused together encapsulating an M. Mycoides chromosome as they did so.
Finally the cells were treated with tetracycline so that only those with the M. Mycoides genome would survive.
The transplant was effective in about 1/150 000 cells, which was enough to give healthy colonies of the transformed bacteria that did not contain the M. Capricolum DNA.
It is not entirely clear how the M. Mycoides took over the cells. However researchers do suggest that the cells containing multiples genomes soon divide with each daughter cell containing only one genome. Those that had the M. Capricolum genome would have been killed off by the tetracycline leaving only those with M. Mycoides genome remaining.
This fascinating process is a mere step in Craig Venter’s plan to create a genome from scratch. He says the first synthetic bacterium is to be created in rapid time!
Keep your eye out!

Original article from New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12157
Peter Aldhous