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It's time to stir up some of those stagnant brain cells. If so moved (and without argument), please respond with your views on this: (Excerpts are listed below - follow the link for the entire article) Peggy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062802046.html Scientists Report DNA Transplant Organisms Adopt Donor Traits By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 29, 2007; Page A03 Scientists said yesterday that they had transplanted a microbe's entire, tangled mass of DNA into a closely related organism, a delicate operation that cleanly transformed the recipient from one species into the other. * * * "This is equivalent to changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of [PC] software," said study leader J. Craig Venter, chief executive of Synthetic Genomics, a Rockville company racing to be the first to create fully synthetic, replicating cells. The success confirms that chromosomes can survive transplantation intact and literally rewrite the identity and occupation of the cells they move into. That is a crucial finding for scientists who hope to make novel life forms by packing synthetic chromosomes into hollow, laboratory-grown cells. * * * * The total identity makeover, described in yesterday's online edition of the journal Science, is a modern version of work done in the 1940s, when Rockefeller University scientists moved DNA from one strain of a bacterial species to another, causing a change that was passed to its offspring. That work is enshrined in history books as the first proof that DNA is the chemical carrier of genetic information. Similarly, scientists at Harvard University earlier this month reported they had performed "whole genome" transplants from mouse cells into fertilized mouse eggs, a move that reprogrammed those eggs to behave differently. But the new work, done at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, is the first in which the entire genetic load from one species has been transferred to another species "naked" -- without the cumbersome protein coatings that usually envelop DNA and can get in scientists' way. Moreover, the size of the transplanted genome, about 1 million genetic letters, or "bases," is large. That offers hope that complicated genetic programs requiring lots of DNA code will be transplantable. * * * * The organisms he is working with do not cause disease, he said, and could be modified so they cannot survive outside the laboratory. The DNA transplants involve chemical washes that gently clean the donor DNA, and other washes that make the recipient's outer membrane porous, so the new DNA can enter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn