New Synthetic Cell Challenges One-Gene, One-Trait Hypothesis

“Life is much more like a symphony orchestra than a piccolo player,” J. Craig Venter says about his institute's new synthetic bacterium. It carries a mere 473 genes, a smaller genome than any autonomously replicating cell ever found in nature. That Venter and his collaborators synthesized a new bacterium and brought it to life in a bacterial corpse is not the biggest part of this story. Perhaps more importantly, their synthetic mini microbe, designated JCVI-syn3.0, contains many quasi-essential genes—genes not absolutely necessary for viability but critical for robust growth. This is not the one-gene, one-trait phenomenon that cell reductionists were wishing for, he asserts. Details appeared 25 March 2016 in Science (doi:10.1126/science.aad6253).