Synthetic Biology: Genome Transferred Between Two Bacteria Via Yeast

One More Step Towards A Synthetic Genome - Artificial life
Scientists were able to transfer the genome of a type of bacteria in yeast, edit, and then successfully transplanted into a second type of bacteria. This research has helped to overcome any obstacles to create new micro-organisms that may one day be used to produce biofuels, clean up toxic sites, retaining the carbon or other applications. These works are being published in the latest issue of Science (reference below).

Carole Lartigue and colleagues had already found a way to transplant the genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides, into another, Mycoplasma capricolum. They also realized that to transplant the genome of M. mycoides in yeast gave way to alter the genome of another way.

How can the bacteria host accepts foreign DNA?
To transplant the genome changed in a new bacterium, researchers were faced a problem similar to that of surgeons performing a transplant operation: how to make the recipient accepts the foreign element?
Many bacteria use systems of restriction enzymes to protect themselves against foreign DNA. They are equipped with enzymes called "restriction" can recognize short sequences of DNA and cut.

To protect their own DNA, the bacteria bind to specific positions on the genome of chemicals called methyl groups. Yeasts, however, do not methylate their genome in this way.

After transplanting the genome of M. mycoides in yeast and have eliminated a nonessential gene, which could have been done in the bacterium itself, Lartigue and colleagues were able to circumvent two-step restriction made by the host bacterium, M. capricolum. They were first inactivated enzyme restriction of M. capricolum and methyl groups added to the genome changed even in yeast. Then they were transferred in M. capricolum genome, which occurs after several cycles of division a new strain of the microbe donor, M. mycoides.
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Reference:
Article: Creating Strains from Bacterial Genomes that Have Been Engineered and Cloned in Yeast
Authors: Carole Lartigue, Sanjay Vashee, Mikkel A. Algire, Ray-Yuan Chuang, Gwynedd A. Benders, Li Ma, Vladimir N. Noskov, Evgeniya A. Denisova, Daniel G. Gibson, Nacyra Assad-Garcia, Nina Alperovich, David W. Thomas, Chuck Merryman, Clyde A. Hutchison, Hamilton O. Smith, J. Craig Venter, John I. Glass
DOI: 10.1126/science.1173759
Journal Publication: Science
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Source: EurekAlert