Mycoplasma laboratorium

Mycoplasma laboratory is a name for a previously existing, artificial bacterium with a minimal genome. As a strategy for the production has been proposed to synthesize a genome containing only the essential genes of Mycoplasma species and this genome then in bacterial cells, the genome of which has been removed to insert. The name Mycoplasma laboratory is indeed derived from the mycoplasma bacteria whose genome is very small and already explored, but represents only a working title for the project and is not an official taxon.

One objective of the relevant experiments is to determine how large is the minimum necessary for a living organism number of genes in order to maintain metabolism, growth and reproduction can. A research team of about 20 scientists led by Craig Venter and Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith Othanel expected that the resulting bacterium with synthetic DNA is self-replicating. In a published study, they deleted genes of Mycoplasma genitalium and reported that 382 of the 482 genes of this organism are essential. Currently, experiments run with a variant with 381 protein -coding genes with 580,000 base pairs.

The minimal genome artificially produced is by the will of Craig Venter serve as a starting point to produce genome variants for bacteria that are capable of important biotechnological processes perform such as the extraction of fuels from sugar or the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.