Episode 40
Are synthetic genomes in our future?
A huge breakthrough of the last few decades is our ability to sequence genomes - pulling out the order of bases in our DNA to understand exactly what makes organisms tick. However, a new field takes it a step further by creating synthetic genomes that are built from scratch to produce custom DNA. Scientists even hope to re-code pieces of DNA that are redundant to perform more tasks. This technique promises to revolutionize many industries, with the most imminent advancements in the production of super bacteria that can resist viruses and save billions of dollars. James dives into a paper about synthetic DNA that sounds more like sci-fi than anything.
Check out the paper in Nature here and the Stat News article here.
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