In a cooperative effort of teams from CAS SIBS and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Shanghai and the Wuhan Feisha Gene Information Co., a functional single-chromosome yeast was evolved from a Saccharomyces cerevisiae haploid cell containing sixteen linear chromosomes by successive end-to-end chromosome fusions and centromere deletions. The single-chromosome artificial cells had nearly identical transcriptome and similar phenotypical profiles as wild-type yeast, but exhibited reduced growth and showed some other deficits (article in Nature). The team will further use this organism to study differences between single-chromosome prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms. The present achievement is hailed as a major contribution of scientists in Shanghai to synthetic biology, after the chemical synthesis of bovine insulin and tRNA in the 1960ies
CAS news release, August 2, 2018