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Creating living systems. It is easy to ask questions in biology It is difficult to answer And we try to use words like Conformation Flexibility Evolution complexity. Living System???. More of a paradox!!!!.
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It is easy to ask questions in biology • It is difficult to answer • And we try to use words like Conformation Flexibility Evolution complexity
Living System??? More of a paradox!!!!
Chemical composition of cell(Can we design a Cell?)Paradoxes in Living System
Assumptions!!! • Can I create a Cell • Reductionist approach • (Break a cell and see)
1995 Can a complete genetic system be reproduced by chemical synthesis starting with only the digitized DNA sequence contained in a computer? Build a cell which contains only essential genes
Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterium with the smallest complement of genes of any known organism capable of independent growth in the laboratory
Mycoplasma laboratorium or Mycoplasma JCVI-1.0 Craig Venter and Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith partially synthetic species of bacterium derived from the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium called Mycoplasma laboratorium. (smallest known free-living bacterium, and the second-smallest bacterium and also considered to be the organism with the smallest genome (482 genes and 582,970 base pair genome ) till 2002 There is speculation that this line of research could lead to producing bacteria that have been engineered to perform specific reactions, e.g. produce biofuels, make medicines, combat global warming, etc
SYNTHETIC BACTERIA MYCOPLASMA MYCOIDES MYCOPLASMA CAPRIOLUM PUT IT HERE SYNTHESIZED DNA IN A TEST TUBE
Mycoplasmamycoides JCVI-syn1.0 - the world's first synthetic organism First truly synthetic organism created using four bottles of chemicals and a computer
Applications • You can make cells with some genes for living and the other genes for • Biofuel • Biopesticide • Drugs
Advantages We can make cells with few genes required for survival and few for making • Biofuels • Drugs • Biopesticides • bioplastic
Major risks • Bioterrorism
The synthetic cell theory again supports the fact that life did not originate in earth but life appeared from somewhere.
The other theory: Life originated in earth RNA was the first genetic material (RNA world)
MILLER UREY EXPT SPONTANEOUSLY RNA PROTEINS
Flow of Genetic Information Reverse Transcription
RNA DNA RNA DNA RNA RNA RNA PROTEIN PROTEIN PROTEIN
RNA acts as Enzymes “RIBOZYMES”
CHO 1' 2' H OH 3' H OH 4' H OH 5' H2COH P O CH2 Base O 5' H H 4' 1' H H 3' 2' .. :B O OH D-Ribose (open Chain Str.) P -D-Ribofuranose residue in polynucleotide Chain
Explaining the Universe Without a Clue Jack W. Szostak Stepping back conceptually from our parochial water-dominated viewpoint, we can immediately see that water is really a noxious, toxic, corrosive and generally lethal environment for life. In fact given the well known properties of water one might almost be tempted to say that it’s a miracle that life ever began in such a solvent!