PgmNr Y3146: Design and assembly of synthetic chromosomes VIII and I.

Authors:
Jingchuan Luo 1,2 ; Leslie A. Mitchell 1 ; Kun Yang 3,4 ; Karen I. Zeller 4 ; Joel S. Bader 3,4 ; Jef D. Boeke 1

Institutes
1) NYU Langone Medical Center, new york, NY; 2) Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD; 3) Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute of Genetic Medicine, Whiting School of Engineering, JHU, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA; 4) High Throughput Biology Center, JHU School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.

Keyword: Genomics
Abstract:

Synthetic biology, by definition, is to design and construct new biological parts, circuits, and pathways, or introduce biological parts, or pathways into a new system, which do not exist in nature. In 2011, Dymond et al. synthesized the first synthetic eukaryotic chromosome arms synIXR and semi-synVIL. In 2014, Annaluru et al synthesized the first synthetic eukaryotic chromosome synIII. SynIII is functional in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The synthetic yeast grows as well as wild type. As part of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Sc) 2.0 project, I am working on assembly of synthetic chromosomes VIII and I.  So far, 84% of synVIII was completed. SynI is one of the “coolest” chromosomes in Sc2.0, because we plan to attach it to the end of another synthetic chromosome. I have developed a CRISPR based method to fuse one chromosome to another chromosome. I have fused chrI to the longest chromosome arm (chrIV right arm, ~1MB) or shortest chromosome arm (chrIX right arm, 90KB) in budding yeast. Interestingly, the relocation of chrI did not affect yeast growth. Currently I am studying those fusion chromosomes.