We're Not Bragging, Are We?

The J. Craig Venter Institute announced on Wednesday that it has successfully used S. cerevisiae to assemble the genome of the Mycoplasma genitalium bacteria, says this blog post at Good Read. Initially using E. coli, they switched to yeast and found the assembly platform could build the entire genome in one step, according to a yet-to-be published PNAS study. JCVI's Clyde Hutchison says, "I am astounded by our team’s progress in assembling large DNA molecules. It remains to be seen how far we can push this yeast assembly platform but the team is hard at work exploring these methods as we work to boot up the synthetic chromosome."