Replacement Genome Gives Microbe New Identity

摘要

For decades, molecular biologists have genetically modified microbes and other kinds of cells by adding short DNA sequences, whole genes, and even large pieces of chromosomes. Now, in a feat reported in a paper published online by Science this week, one group has induced a bacterium to take up an entire 1.08-million-base genome in one gulp. In doing so, microbiologist John Glass and his colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, have transformed one bacterial species into another.