Boeke and his team unravelled the coding of one of yeast’s 16 chromosomes, then used software to make changes to it - removing repetitive and less-used regions.
They then built a synthetic version of this altered chromosome from scratch, stringing together individual nucleotides - the chemical building blocks of the genes that make up chromosomes, which in turn comprise the genome.
“It is the most extensively altered chromosome ever built,†said Boeke.
“We have made over 50,000 changes to the DNA code in the chromosome and our yeast is still alive. That is remarkable.â€
Yeast shares about a third of its 6,000 genes - units of the chromosome that carry the instructions for cell function - with humans.
“Their effort represents a critical step on the road to building an entire eukaryotic genome,†said a media summary from Science. “It could also help researchers learn more about genome biology - including how genomes are built, how they’re organised, and what makes them work.â€
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