Scientists Create an Arificial Virus

Not only did they create an artificial virus, they created one that reproduces in a span of two weeks:

Venter’s team used their new technique to synthesise the genome of a bacteriophage, a harmless virus that only infects bacteria. It is not the first time a virus has been made from scratch – the poliovirus was synthesized in 2002 by Eckard Wimmer and colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

The SUNY team mail-ordered small DNA chains, called oligonucleotides, to match the sequence of the virus. They then painstakingly pasted them in the right order to reproduce its genome. The process took several years, although Wimmer says he could now do it in several months.

In contrast, Venter and his colleagues at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives (IBEA) in Rockville, Maryland, were able to synthesise the bacteriophage’s genome in a fortnight and with far fewer steps.

The bacteriophage’s genome, at about 6000 DNA bases, is roughly the same size as the polio virus. “I’m impressed,” says Wimmer. “If I had to do it again I’d use their method.”