Giraffes killed by lightning in a US safari park
A drive-through safari park in Florida confirmed Tuesday that two giraffes had been struck by lightning last month. The fatal incident occurred on May 3rd. 10-year-old Lily and 1-year-old Jioni were in the pasture when a sudden thunderstorm broke through.
Scientists have created a living microorganism whose DNA was entirely created by human hands. It may be a new life form, experts said, and is a milestone in new genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
Researchers at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain reported last month that they had rewrote the DNA of the bacterium Escherichia coli, creating an artificial genome four times larger and far more complex than ever before.
The new bacteria reproduce more slowly thannormal E. coliand develop longer, rod-shaped cells. But they are very alive. Their cells work according to new biological rules and produce familiar proteins with a reconstructed genetic code.
The new study was led by Jason Chin, a molecular biologist at the UK Medical Research Council. He wanted to find out why all living things encode genetic information in the same amazing way.
“It's a milestone,” said Tom Ellis, director of the Center for Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the new study. “Nobody has done anything like this before in terms of size or number of changes.”
The achievement may one day lead to the development of new microorganisms that produce innovative drugs or other valuable molecules. These artificial bacteria can also provide clues about how the genetic code emerged in early life history.
The Cambridge team's research project is just one of many in recent years to develop artificial genomes. The list of possible uses is long. An attractive possibility: Viruses may not be able to penetrate cells with artificially produced DNA. Researchers are also interested in recoding life because it opens up the possibility of creating molecules with entirely new chemical structures.
The full report “Total synthesis of Escherichia coli with a recoded genome” was published in thePublished in the journal Nature.
