George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard Medical School and member of Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative, reported the creation of billions of synthetic ribosomes that readily create a long, complex protein called firefly luciferase.
“We have not made artificial life, and that is not our primary goal, but this is a huge milestone in that direction,” Church said in comments on the work before the event.
Ribosomes are bodies inside of each cell that take the instructions from DNA and use them to create the proteins encoded by specific genes. Proteins are critical to forming the body’s structure, including muscles, bones and tendons, and are also critical in its daily functioning, through enzymes, for example, which control metabolism.
“The reason it is a step toward artificial life is that the key component of all living systems is the ribosome, which does protein synthesis. It is the most conserved and one of the most complicated biological machines,” Church said.
Using the bacteria E. coli, Church and Research Fellow Michael Jewett extracted the bacteria’s natural ribosomes, broke them down into their constituent parts, removed the key ribosomal RNA and then synthesized the ribosomal RNA anew from molecules. The ultimate goal is to create an artificial genome of 151 genes that they believe are the minimum to create a functioning, self-replicating cell.
“It could be that the hardest steps are still ahead of us,” Church said.
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