Science Weekly Extra: Craig Venter announces a synthetic life form

At a press conference yesterday, Craig Venter announced the creation of what he describes as the first synthetic life form . In a paper published in Science , a team of 24 researchers led by Daniel Gibson outline the steps they took to synthesise the 1.08 million base pair genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides. They effectively constructed the genome from four bottles of chemicals, one for each of the four nucleotides that make up DNA. This synthetic DNA was then "booted up" in a cell to create the first cell controlled completely by an artificially created genome. The genome contains blueprints, in which are encoded the names of the researchers, a website address, contact email and quotes from James Joyce, Richard Feynman and a biography of Robert Oppenheimer.