Scientists a step nearer to creating artificial life. To the untrained eye, the tiny, misshapen, fatty blobs on Giovanni Murtas's microscope slide would not look very impressive.
But when the Italian scientist saw their telltale green fluorescent glint he knew he had achieved something remarkable - and taken a vital step towards building a living organism from scratch. The green glow was proof that his fragile creations were capable of making their own proteins, a crucial ability of all living things and vital for carrying out all other aspects of life.
Though only a first step, the discovery will hasten efforts by scientists to build the world's first synthetic organism. First genome transplant changes one species into another. For the first time, scientists have completely transformed a species of bacteria into another species by transplanting its complete set of DNA.
The achievement marks a significant step toward the construction of synthetic life, with applications including the production of clean fuel in as little as a decade. Scientists Carole Lartigue and colleagues from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, have published their results in a recent issue of Science.