Science writer
‘Synthetic’ A scientific research story where the living cell has evolved as much as a normal living cell.
Dr. Prasad Alex writes
JuThe title is taken from a dialogue from the sci-fi movie Rasik Park. In his 1993 film ‘Jurassic’, the famous Hollywood filmmaker Stephen Spielberg depicted the dinosaurs of the ‘Jurassic’ era in their ancient genetic remains.artificially’ It is a life-giving story. The title text is taken from a conversation between famous actor Jeff Goldblum’s character Ian Malcolm and his colleagues. The conversation is almost like this.
“If there’s one thing the history of evolution teaches us, it’s that life can’t be contained. Life breaks barriers and becomes free. Expanding into new areas. The journey will be painful, bumping into obstacles and falling dangerously often, but life will find a way.”
“Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free–it expands to new territories and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, I’m simply saying that life finds a way.”
Not a dinosaur though ‘Synthetic’ Here is the story of scientific research where the living cell has come a long way in evolution just like a normal living cell. It is made possible by inserting a genome created by splicing together the limited genetic segments of a single-celled organism into another cell. It is literally completely ‘artificial lifeI don’t know if I can say ‘. Despite the deletion of 45 percent of the original genes that code for proteins in the parent cell’s genome, it was able to acquire the ability to adapt to favorable environments and cope with adverse conditions in a 300-day laboratory experiment. The experiment demonstrated beyond doubt that evolution occurs despite genetically imposed constraints.
Just like a Hollywood movie None of the velociraptors (Velociraptor) An evolutionary biologist Jay T. Lennon’s (Jay T. Lennon) We can’t find it in the lab. But Lennon, a professor in the Department of Biology at Indiana University Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences, and his colleagues show us that life does indeed find a way. Lennon’s research team ‘artificially’ The research was carried out using a minimal or finite organism that had been constructed. Everything else had been removed, leaving only its essential genes. The team found that such a confined cell could evolve as quickly as a normal cell. The ability to flexibly adapt to environments has been acquired through evolution despite having an unpredictably limited aberrant genome. That is It means that life has found its way.
Jay T. LenaJay T. Lennon
“There seems to be something in life that really stays intact,” Lennon says. “We can reduce it to just the bare essentials, but that doesn’t stop the evolutionary process from happening.”
For the study, Lennon’s team Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn3B A ‘synthetic’ single-celled organism was used. It is said to be a shortened version of the bacteria M. mycoides commonly found in the intestines of sheep and similar animals. Over the millennia, the bacterium, which remained a parasite, had naturally lost many of its genes during evolution. Because it depends on its host for nourishment. in California J. Craig is a researcher at the Venter Institute This gene depletion was ‘artificially’ taken a step further. In 2016, they found 45 percent of the 901 genes natural M. mycoides excluded from the genome. The genome was created to contain only the minimum number of genes necessary for self-sustaining cellular life. With only 493 genes, M. mycoides JCVI-syn3B ‘s genome is smaller than that of any known free-living organism. By comparison, free-living bacteria have between 1,500 and 7,500 genes. The current estimate of the human genome is around 40,000. In general, the genomes of many animals and plants contain more than 20,000 genes.
mycoides JCVI-syn3B -group of cells – Electron micrograph image magnified 15,000 times. mycoides JCVI-syn3B – contains fewer than 500 genes. Credit: Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman
In principle, the simplest life form would have no elements carrying functional repeats and would carry only the minimum number of genes necessary for life. Any genetic change in such an organism is highly likely to fatally disrupt one or more cell functions. Hence there are challenges to enable evolution. Thus, organisms with genomes carrying only essential sequences will have very few target genes upon which positive selection can act. Thus their chances of being favored are limited.
mycoides JCVI-syn3B It has been shown to be able to grow and divide under laboratory conditions. However, one has to adapt to the pressures of evolution over time ‘The finite cell‘ Lennon and his colleagues were interested to know how they would respond. Especially for limited destinations where natural selection can operate. There was more curiosity to see how things would play out in the event that new mutations could be created, with unpredictable consequences.
mycoides JCVI-syn3BReferring to the , Lennon says, “Every gene in its genome is essential. One can hypothesize that mutations have no room to move, which limits the possibility that the organism could evolve.”
But M. mycoides JCVI-syn3B In fact, the researchers found that it has a high mutation rate. For that 2000 bacterial generations were grown and allowed to evolve freely in the laboratory for 300 days, equivalent to about 40,000 years of human evolution. That is how it was discovered that there is a high rate of evolution.
These evolved over 300 days as the truest, non-minimal M. The next step was to compare experiments with mycoids as well as with a strain of new minimal cells that had not evolved. In comparative tests, researchers evaluated equal amounts of strains grown together in a single test medium. The strain best suited to the environment turned out to have more members.
A non-minimal version of the bacteria, i.e. a non-evolutionary minimal version that did not make artificial changes to the genome, was found to easily outcompete the minimal version. But the 300-day-evolved minimal bacteria were almost comparable to the non-minimal version. Most of the capacity lost due to genome depletion was effectively recovered. Among them, the researchers identified the genes that had changed the most through evolution. Some of these genes are involved in building the cell surface, while the functions of many others have not been elucidated.
Understanding how organisms with simple genomes overcome evolutionary challenges is expected to help advance biological research in many ways. The researchers believe that it will provide important clues to long-unanswered problems. Clinical treatment of diseases caused by pathogens, in the host organism Endosymbionts Eternity, (An endosymbiont is an organism that lives in a reciprocal relationship, although not always, within the body or cell of another organism) It is hoped that the effective modification of microbes in genetic engineering and the research on the origin of life will help in major advances. However, Lennon and his team’s research demonstrates the power of natural selection to rapidly improve survival in very simple organisms. In other words, life finds a way for its journey.
The study was published in the journal Nature on July 5. Roy Moger, lead author of the research paper, was a PhD student in Lennon’s lab at the time of Reischer’s study.
For additional reading
“Evolution of a minimal cell” by R. Z. Moger-Reischer, J. I. Glass, K. S. Wise, L. Sun, D. M. C. Bittencourt, B. K. Lehmkuhl, D. R. Schoolmaster Jr, M. Lynch and J. T. Lennon, 5 July 2023, Nature.
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2023-07-24 17:02:57
