First synthetic genome of bacterial class organism created (previous only a virus has been made synthetically). Next goal will be to make a synthetic bacteria with extensively re-written or entirely novel genetic code (as this one was just a copy of a living organism):http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1151721
Longer term goals that I can think of:
1. Profitable products: organism that produce novel compounds from cheaper feedstokes.
2. Making a more stable genetic material, something that does not evolve, this can be done today by making a very fault intolerant genome (any mutate must die), but this will only provide moderate improvements in genetic fidelity, long term would be the creation of an redundant error correct chromosome arrays (RECCA) in whtich multiple identical chromosome which cross read, compare, and removed mutate sequence) or even replace DNA with something that is more stable.
Any other ideas of what could be done?
Longer term goals that I can think of:
1. Profitable products: organism that produce novel compounds from cheaper feedstokes.
2. Making a more stable genetic material, something that does not evolve, this can be done today by making a very fault intolerant genome (any mutate must die), but this will only provide moderate improvements in genetic fidelity, long term would be the creation of an redundant error correct chromosome arrays (RECCA) in whtich multiple identical chromosome which cross read, compare, and removed mutate sequence) or even replace DNA with something that is more stable.
Any other ideas of what could be done?