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Science Behind Technology : How It Was Discovered And Science Behind Technology

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3. How it was discovered & Science behind technology (455) (6)

SCRaMbLE (synthetic chromosome rearrangement and modification by loxP-mediated evolution) is a method used to increase the phenotypic and genotypic diversity of organisms1. It relies on the Cre-loxP system which consists of a Cre recombinase enzyme and a loxP site that directs the Cre recombinase, making the system site-specific2. The Cre-loxP system was isolated from bacteriophage P1 where it was described as being a mechanism used by the bacteriophage to insert plasmid DNA into specific sites of the bacterial chromosome3, as well as recombination amongst bacteriophages2. The Cre-loxP system was first tested in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae) in 1987 and determined …show more content…

Using SCRaMbLE, it can be determined which combinations of S. cerevisiae genes produce viable organisms by inserting loxP sites and sequencing the organisms produced as a result. The Sc2.0 project is being undertaken by many scientists across the world, each focusing on a separate chromosome6. The SCRaMbLe system is utilised to make modifications in the created genome, as without these induced modifications, the chromosome would be a duplicate of existing non-synthetic chromosomes6, thus it would not be classified as a synthetic chromosome.

Sc2.0 has not been fully completed as of yet, however many of S. cerevisiae’s chromosomes have been synthetically made, the first of which was synIII, a synthetic version of Yeast Chromosome III, which is 86.5% shorter than its naturally-occurring counterpart8. Overall 30% of the yeast chromosomes have been entirely synthesised10, and there is still a large amount of work needed to be completed to finish synthesising the incomplete synthetic chromosomes, as well as putting all of the synthetic chromosomes together to make a synthetic yeast organism, where the synthetic chromosomes have a minimal impact on function and viability. Experiments have been conducted to determine if they can combine the function of three synthetic yeast chromosomes, synIII, synVI, and SynIXR, which resulted in a slightly slower growth rate of the cells with all three synthetic chromosomes11.

SCRaMbLE can be used as a genome

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