El biòleg nord-americà Craig Venter, famós per haver sigut el pioner en generar la seqüència del genoma humà, ha aconseguit crear en un laboratori un cromosoma de síntesi, primer pas per a la creació de la primera forma de vida artificial a la Terra.Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be "a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before".
The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.
