Synthetic Vaccines

In 2010 scientists from the JCVI announced the creation of the first bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome1. The ‘synthetic’ cell was mycoplasma, a bacterium with an exceptionally small genome of less than 1 million base pairs and without a cell wall. Carole Lartigue, one of the co-authors of that landmark paper, later returned to the National Research Institute for Agriculture (INRA) in Bordeaux, France, to continue working on Mycoplasma. In fact Mycoplasma is not just a beautiful model organism for synthetic genomics. Their small genomes make them also a great model for systems biology, a work that was spearheaded by Luis Serrano at CRG in Barcelona2, 3, 4, who characterized Mycoplasma in a quantitative manner to apply this knowledge to do a rational engineering for novel applications. Read more
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