The HIndu Science Article Updates March 2016

In Friday’s edition of the journal Science, researchers J. Craig Venter and Clyde Hutchinson and colleagues at the Venter Institute, California, report the making of a living, replicating and stable cell that uses the minimum number of genes — 437 — to be considered biologically ‘alive.’ In the natural world, no living organism is ever known to possess fewer than 1000 genes. The knowledge gained from this creation may be foundational to understand how organisms can be created from scratch.