Abstract
Full genome recoding, or rewriting codon meaning, through chemical synthesis of entire bacterial chromosomes has become feasible in the past several years. Recoding an organism can impart new properties including non-natural amino acid incorporation, virus resistance, and biocontainment. The estimated cost of construction that includes DNA synthesis, assembly by recombination, and troubleshooting, is now comparable to costs of early stage development of drugs or other high-tech products. Here, we discuss several recently published assembly methods and provide some thoughts on the future, including how synthetic efforts might benefit from the analysis of natural recoding processes and organisms that use alternative genetic codes.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Matthew Weinstock and Daniel Gibson (SGI), and George Church, Nili Ostrov, Matthieu Landon, Cameron Gardner and other Church Lab members (Harvard Medical School), for previous stimulating discussions. We acknowledge support from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grant HR0011-15-C-0094; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH for a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F32GM125108 to J.K.) and an NIH training grant (5T32GM007598, F.S.); and the Wellcome Trust for a Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellowship (107402/Z/15/Z to Y.H.L.).
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Communicated by M. Kupiec.
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Kuo, J., Stirling, F., Lau, Y.H. et al. Synthetic genome recoding: new genetic codes for new features. Curr Genet 64, 327–333 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-017-0754-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-017-0754-z