Chapter 3 Data two

Scientists in the United States are conducting a historic experiment -- creating a new form of life in the lab -- to answer one of biology's most fundamental questions: how life itself came to be. They will remove the DNA of a single-celled organism, making it lifeless, and then inject it with the minimum amount of life genetic information to see how many genes the cell needs to survive and replicate itself.Writing in Clyde Hutchinson of the Rockville Genetic Research Institute in Maryland, they used a microbe called the Mycoplasma spp., which has 517 genes, one of the lowest number of genes ever known .

Studies have shown that at least 250 to 350 genes are required to form life, but the functions of more than 100 genes are still unclear.The researchers said that this research is not yet called "creating life", but just a reassembly of the original life.However, this research will play a fundamental role in the real artificial life.