The US scientist J. Craig Venter and his team are reporting the creation of first man-made DNA structure, another important step to create artificial life.

The team does not intend to stop here and in the next and final step, which is ongoing at the JCVI, the researchers will attempt to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on the synthetically made genome.

In a report published in in the journal Science by Dan Gibson, Ph.D., et al, the scientists are describing how they manage to synthesize and assemble the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0

The building blocks of DNA-adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thiamine (T) are not easy chemicals to artificially synthesize into chromosomes. As the strands of DNA get longer they get increasingly brittle, making them more difficult to work with. Prior to today's publication the largest synthesized DNA contained only 32,000 base pairs. Thus, building a synthetic version of the genome of the bacteria M. genitalium genome that has more than 580,000 base pairs presented a formidable challenge, the scientists said.

Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacteria that causes a sexually transmitted infection in men and women has a simple structure because its DNA is carried on a single chromosom

According to the JCVI team the copy is perfect, but they voluntarily have modified a gene necessary for the bacteria to infect people. The synthetic bacteria also contain DNA "watermarks" that the group added to identify its synthetic nature.

The synthetic Mycoplasma genitalium has a molecular weight of 360,110 kilodaltons (kDa). Printed in 10 point font, the letters of the Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0 genome span 147 pages.

The next step of the process is to insert the synthetic chromosome into a living cell where it should “take control” and become a new life form.

Venter and his team have already managed to transplant the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another. In June 2007  the scientists from Venter institute transplanted chromosomes to change the bacterial species Mycoplasma capricolum into Mycoplasma mycoides Large Colony (LC).

“We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it,” he said in the past. “That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before."

But if J. Craig Venter has indeed solved the problem of creating artificial life this could trigger a huge ethical debate, especially since Venter is already controversial for his role in the study of the human genome.

Also, he applied for a patent for the synthetic bacterium, which means that he could become the only person to control how his discovery will be used. Venter said the synthetic chromosome has a positive potential, as it can be used to create new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming. Also, this breakthrough could lead to the creation of new drugs.

"Genomics is going to do for the energy and chemical field what it did in the early 1990s for medical biotechnology.", Venter said in 2006 when he started Synthetic Genomics Inc. in Rockville, Md., home of the Venter Institute and the Institute for Genomic Research

But the artificially-created bacteria could be used also as biological weapons.