Scientists Launch Wild New Project to Build a Human Genome From Scratch

A team of researchers based in the United Kingdom goes where no scientist dared to go there – by writing artificial human DNA from zero. They hope that the project will answer fundamental questions about the human genome and transform our understanding of health and disease.

But the subject of research is, for obvious, controversial reasons. Scientists have largely avoided trying to create comprehensive synthetic human genomes, distrust to propel us into a dystopian, Gattaca-Sque future full of designer babies.

Now, the wellcomome Trust, the world’s largest medical charitable, has reconstructed about $ 11.7 million (10 million pounds sterling) to launch the Synthetic Human Genome Project (SYNHG). The charitable organization says that the advantages prevail over the risks. Technology, he says, could be used to create new medical treatments, such as designer cell therapies and virus-resistant tissue transplantation.

Jason Chin, professor at the University of Oxford, will lead the project in collaboration with several other universities and research centers based in the United Kingdom. During the next half-decade, Chin and his colleagues hope to create fundamental tools, technologies and methods to allow researchers to create genomes from zero.

“The ability to synthesize large genomes, including human cell genomes, can transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly modify the horizons of biotechnology and medicine,” Chin said in a statement.

The Wellcoma Trust also contributed important funds to the human genome project, which was completed 25 years ago. In fact, building a human genome from nothing is even more ambitious and should take years, perhaps decades. The Chin team recently synthesized the complete genome of E. coli Bacteria, but these are small potatoes next to a human genome, which is about 700 times larger.

“If you think of the human genome, it’s more than just a set of genes on a channel”, Julian Sale, group leader at the MRC Molecular biology laboratorysaid The guardian. “There is a lot of genome, sometimes called the dark matter of the genome, that we do not know what it is. The idea is that if you can successfully build genomes, you can fully understand them. ”

The first step of scientists will be to create a complete and synthetic human chromosome, which researchers plan to tackle over the next five to ten years. Unlike the genome edition, which operates on one or a handful of genes at the same timeThe synthesis of the genome allows researchers to modify DNA on a larger scale. This could help determine the large expanses of our DNA – including those that we do not know much – determine our health and our characteristics.

“The ability to synthesize large genomes, including human cell genomes, can transform our understanding of genome biology and profoundly modify the horizons of biotechnology and medicine,” Chin said in a statement.

Some researchers fear that the capacity to write human genetic code will give researchers frightening control over human life systems. He could one day be used to create synthetic humans, biological weapons or even creatures with human DNA, Bill Earnshaw, a scientist in genetics at the University of Edinburgh, said BBC News. But he adds that the technology necessary to do these things is still far enough.

The project attempts to tackle the thorny ethical problems of the creation of a human genome head -on. The Wellcoma Trust finances a parallel research effort on the social and ethical problems of the creation of human genomes in a laboratory, led by Joy Zhang at the University of Kent.

“This technology will be developed one day, so by doing it now, we try at least to do so in the way as responsible as possible and to face ethical and moral questions as a front [a] as much as possible, ”said Tom Collins, principal director of research at Wellcome, said BBC News.