China's synthesis of the world's first "simplified" yeast strain

Author: Zhang Jiawei Date: 2018-08-03

According to Xinhua News Agency, London, August 1st, the Chinese research team has synthesized the world's first "simplified" yeast strain with only one chromosome, instead of the 16 chromosomes common to this strain. This study reveals a new relationship between chromosome structure and cellular function, or contributes to the treatment of genomic defect diseases.

The relevant research results paper was published online in the British journal Nature on August 1. The Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a number of domestic institutions have collaborated to synthesize 16 natural chromosomes of eukaryotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae into functional single large chromosomes. In another report published in Nature on the same day, researchers at the New York University's Langon Medical Center and other institutions also merged the Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain chromosomes, but eventually created two chromosomes in the cells.

According to Nature, the researchers of these two results have used the popular CRISPR gene editing technology in the industry to gradually reduce the number of yeast chromosomes.

Jenny Litti, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that the research has further enriched the application of gene editing technology, and the research results will become a very promising tool in the medical field for interfering and correcting genomic defects. It is important for the treatment of genomic defect diseases.

Litty believes that new results do not mean that people can create new species that do not exist in nature. “Today we have only copied, simplified and reorganized existing genomic information at the most, and I think this has a long way to go before the so-called 'design' new life form,” he said.

The eukaryotic Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an important model for studying chromosomal abnormalities, and one-third of the genes are homologous to humans. In the press release to the media, the team said that they synthesized all the genetic information on the 16 chromosomes into one, and the three-dimensional structure of the chromosome in the single chromosome yeast cell has changed greatly, but the cell function is normal, which reveals The new relationship between the three-dimensional structure of chromosomes and the realization of cell life function.

The Nature website said that this study may help explain the impact of differences in the number of chromosomes in different species. (Reporter Zhang Jiawei)

Source: Xinhua News Agency

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