Synthetic yeast genome project creates strain with over 50% synthetic DNA

Yeast

Source: © Cell/Zhao et al

Entirely artificial organism opens up door to designer yeast with biotechnology applications

A strain of yeast that has a genome that is more than 50% synthetic DNA has been produced in the lab for the first time. This is the latest milestone in a 15-year effort to design and build an entirely synthetic eukaryotic genome from scratch.

The synthetic yeast genome project, also known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Sc) 2.0, comprises research groups from around the world who have each taken ownership over producing a synthetic version of one of the 16 chromosomes that make up the yeast genome.