Geneticists were able to produce yeast artificial chromosome. This is great progress in the emerging field of synthetic biology, which is to make reality the creation of new drugs, new nutrients or biofuels.

Until now, scientists were able to create only the chromosomes of bacteria and viral DNA, which have a much simpler architecture. This road, which took seven years of effort by an international team of scientists, led to the construction of a genome and assembly of 273 871 base pairs of DNA from yeast. The total number is slightly lower than its natural equivalent, which has exactly 316 667.

In fact, the team of scientists has been made ​​numerous changes to the genetic basis of this chromosome, removing unnecessary portions, which are not necessary for the reproduction and growth of the chromosome.

"Our study carry synthetic biology from theory to reality," said Jeff militant, director of the Institute for Genetic systems in the medical center Langon NYU. He led the study, published online Thursday in the American journal Science.

According to him, "this work is the biggest step of the international effort to build a complete genotype of synthetic yeast."

This chromosome eukaryotes (contains genes in the cell nucleus of all plants and animals) which has undergone unprecedented changes are then incorporated into the living cells of the beer yeast.

The latter reacted quite normal, but gained new qualities that do not exist in the natural yeast, stress researchers. They note that these yeasts have 16 chromosomes total, while the man is 23, wrote Monday.

"Changing the genome is like making bets because inappropriate modification can kill the cell," said Professor more militant. "We had over 50,000 changes in the DNA of the chromosome and our yeast is still alive, which is remarkable," he boasted.

This technique of re-assembly of the chromosome, scientists will be able to manipulate the genome of yeast and to impart certain qualities. Thus, from now on, it should be possible to develop artificial yeast species, which can produce a rare drug or some vaccines, of which one is that of hepatitis B, which is derived from yeast.

The artificial yeast may also be used to stimulate the development of more efficient biofuel.