- Email: [email protected]
Designer chromosomes could turn cells into factories
For daily news stories, visit newscientist.com/news
Shroud of Turin depicts Y-shaped crucifixion wrist of a crucified person. So he asked Luigi Garlaschelli of the University of Pavia, Italy, to assume different crucifixion postures, while a cannula attached to his wrist dribbled donated blood down his arm.
Rebuild nature with designer chromosomes
it differ significantly from the original. To create the synthetic version – SynIII – the team removed the “junk”, non-coding DNA. They then divided the sequence into chunks that could be created and stitched together. Finally, they inserted SynIII into yeast cells, replacing chromosome III. The resulting yeast lived, suggesting that the synthetic chromosome performed all the functions necessary for life (Science, doi.org/r48). “The work represents an important milestone in synthetic biology,” says Harris Wang of Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Boeke’s team wants to create a
YEAST just got an upgrade: an entirely synthetic chromosome. The development is being hailed as a milestone for biology, and could lead to microbes that produce exotic materials not found in nature. Jef Boeke at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues created a version of yeast chromosome III. Crucially, it contains a suite of changes that make
a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle in February. Borrini says similar positions were used during medieval torture, but in those cases the victims were suspended from a beam by binding their wrists with rope, rather than using nails. The results confirm earlier experiments by Gilbert Lavoie, a Massachusetts-based doctor, that suggested a Y-shaped crucifixion. “The blood-flow is absolutely consistent with what you see on the Shroud,” Lavoie says. He described his studies in Unlocking the Secrets of the Shroud. “The imprint on the Shroud does not correspond with many traditional artistic images of crucifixion,” says Niels Svensson, a doctor in Maribo, Denmark, who has also studied the Shroud. But not all artists show Jesus in a T-shaped posture. For instance, the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens repeatedly painted Jesus with his arms above his head on the cross, as did many others. Whoever made the Shroud must have been a skilled forger to create the correct blood spatter for a crucifixion. The alternative is that they made the right pattern by chance. “It could be that the artist just decided to draw the rivulets of blood parallel to the arms for artistic reasons,” –Shrouded in mystery– says Borrini. Linda Geddes n camerapress/ddp
THE image of Christ on the cross, arms stretched out to the sides, is seared onto many Christians’ minds. But this isn’t necessarily how people have imagined it throughout history. A new analysis of the Shroud of Turin, which appears to depict a man that has been crucified, suggests that whoever created it thought crucifixion involved the hands being nailed above the head. The Shroud of Turin is a piece of linen cloth imprinted with the faint image of a naked man with what appear to be streams of blood running down his arms (seen in the bottom centre of the photo), and other wounds. Some believe it is the cloth in which Jesus’s body was wrapped after crucifixion. But reliable records of it only begin in the 14th century, and carbon dating suggests the Shroud is a medieval forgery. Either way, the Shroud is worth studying, says Matteo Borrini at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. “If it’s a fake, then it’s a very interesting piece of art and human ingenuity,” he says. Borrini wanted to know if the “bloodstains” on the left arm, the clearest ones, were consistent with the flow of blood from the
They found that the marks on the shroud did correspond to a crucifixion, but only if the arms were placed above the head in a “Y” position, rather than in the classic “T” depiction. “This would have been a very painful position and one which would have created difficulty breathing,” says Borrini. Someone crucified in this way may have died from asphyxiation. Borrini presented his results at
whole synthetic yeast genome, but that will take time because yeast has 16 chromosomes. Such a genome could be fitted with switchable sections, allowing biologists to modify the microbes more precisely than with existing gene editing techniques. Many synthetic biologists are trying to turn microbes like yeast into tiny factories to make useful molecules or drugs. Giving the microbes a genome that can be modified quickly
“You can make all kinds of unnatural things inside cells by tweaking proteins to do unusual chemistry”
should make that task easier. Last year Farren Isaacs of Yale University and his colleagues gave a bacterium the ability to insert an artificial amino acid into proteins by altering its genetic code. “You can make all kinds of unnatural things inside cells by tweaking proteins to do unusual chemistry,” says Boeke. In 2008, Craig Venter and his team built a synthetic bacterial genome, but this was mostly copied. By contrast, the SynIII chromosome differs significantly from the natural chromosome.“That is the important and exciting part,” says Isaacs. Colin Barras n 5 April 2014 | NewScientist | 15
Shroud of Turin depicts Y-shaped crucifixion wrist of a crucified person. So he asked Luigi Garlaschelli of the University of Pavia, Italy, to assume different crucifixion postures, while a cannula attached to his wrist dribbled donated blood down his arm.
Rebuild nature with designer chromosomes
it differ significantly from the original. To create the synthetic version – SynIII – the team removed the “junk”, non-coding DNA. They then divided the sequence into chunks that could be created and stitched together. Finally, they inserted SynIII into yeast cells, replacing chromosome III. The resulting yeast lived, suggesting that the synthetic chromosome performed all the functions necessary for life (Science, doi.org/r48). “The work represents an important milestone in synthetic biology,” says Harris Wang of Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Boeke’s team wants to create a
YEAST just got an upgrade: an entirely synthetic chromosome. The development is being hailed as a milestone for biology, and could lead to microbes that produce exotic materials not found in nature. Jef Boeke at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues created a version of yeast chromosome III. Crucially, it contains a suite of changes that make
a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle in February. Borrini says similar positions were used during medieval torture, but in those cases the victims were suspended from a beam by binding their wrists with rope, rather than using nails. The results confirm earlier experiments by Gilbert Lavoie, a Massachusetts-based doctor, that suggested a Y-shaped crucifixion. “The blood-flow is absolutely consistent with what you see on the Shroud,” Lavoie says. He described his studies in Unlocking the Secrets of the Shroud. “The imprint on the Shroud does not correspond with many traditional artistic images of crucifixion,” says Niels Svensson, a doctor in Maribo, Denmark, who has also studied the Shroud. But not all artists show Jesus in a T-shaped posture. For instance, the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens repeatedly painted Jesus with his arms above his head on the cross, as did many others. Whoever made the Shroud must have been a skilled forger to create the correct blood spatter for a crucifixion. The alternative is that they made the right pattern by chance. “It could be that the artist just decided to draw the rivulets of blood parallel to the arms for artistic reasons,” –Shrouded in mystery– says Borrini. Linda Geddes n camerapress/ddp
THE image of Christ on the cross, arms stretched out to the sides, is seared onto many Christians’ minds. But this isn’t necessarily how people have imagined it throughout history. A new analysis of the Shroud of Turin, which appears to depict a man that has been crucified, suggests that whoever created it thought crucifixion involved the hands being nailed above the head. The Shroud of Turin is a piece of linen cloth imprinted with the faint image of a naked man with what appear to be streams of blood running down his arms (seen in the bottom centre of the photo), and other wounds. Some believe it is the cloth in which Jesus’s body was wrapped after crucifixion. But reliable records of it only begin in the 14th century, and carbon dating suggests the Shroud is a medieval forgery. Either way, the Shroud is worth studying, says Matteo Borrini at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. “If it’s a fake, then it’s a very interesting piece of art and human ingenuity,” he says. Borrini wanted to know if the “bloodstains” on the left arm, the clearest ones, were consistent with the flow of blood from the
They found that the marks on the shroud did correspond to a crucifixion, but only if the arms were placed above the head in a “Y” position, rather than in the classic “T” depiction. “This would have been a very painful position and one which would have created difficulty breathing,” says Borrini. Someone crucified in this way may have died from asphyxiation. Borrini presented his results at
whole synthetic yeast genome, but that will take time because yeast has 16 chromosomes. Such a genome could be fitted with switchable sections, allowing biologists to modify the microbes more precisely than with existing gene editing techniques. Many synthetic biologists are trying to turn microbes like yeast into tiny factories to make useful molecules or drugs. Giving the microbes a genome that can be modified quickly
“You can make all kinds of unnatural things inside cells by tweaking proteins to do unusual chemistry”
should make that task easier. Last year Farren Isaacs of Yale University and his colleagues gave a bacterium the ability to insert an artificial amino acid into proteins by altering its genetic code. “You can make all kinds of unnatural things inside cells by tweaking proteins to do unusual chemistry,” says Boeke. In 2008, Craig Venter and his team built a synthetic bacterial genome, but this was mostly copied. By contrast, the SynIII chromosome differs significantly from the natural chromosome.“That is the important and exciting part,” says Isaacs. Colin Barras n 5 April 2014 | NewScientist | 15