Scientists created man-made chromosome for complex-cell organisms

Scientists of an International team have created the first artificial chromosome for complex cell organisms.  Earlier, chromosomes have been created for simpler Prokaryotic cells. This artificial chromosome was functioning like a normal cell when it was inserted inside a Yeast cell.

The new chromosome is known as SynIII. The process involved designing and creating 273871 base pairs of DNA - fewer than the 316667 pairs in the original chromosome. The research is significant as the Yeast organisms consist of Eukaryotic cells like Humans, plants and animals.  Yeast share about a 2000 genes with humans. The invention thus can play a significant role in redesigning the animals and other complex life forms.

Process
• Researchers identified coding of one of yeast’s 16 pair of chromosomes.
• They used software to remove its repetitive and less used regions and added tags to it.
• They then created an artificial version of this altered chromosome.
• The artificial chromosome was inserted inside a yeast cell.
• It was able to reproduce like normal cells.
• Yeast gained new functions such as chemical switching which help researcher to scramble the chromosome into thousands of different variants which can make genetic manipulations far easier.
• About 50000 changes were made to the DNA code of the chromosome.

The research can help in design, synthesis and organisation of an entire eukaryotic genome.