Craig Ventner is back in the news again, after the on-line publication of his experiments involving "Changing One Species to Another". I haven't read the full article (and look forward to doing so) but the experiment seems straight forward enough: isolate genomic DNA from Mycoplasma mycoides (which has a very small genome but possesses a tet resistance gene); transform Mycoplasma capricolum with this DNA and select for tet resistance. The abstract suggests rigorous testing to ensure that all the genetic properties of M mycoides are present in the new species, and none of M capricolum. A very neat experiment, but does this really show one species being changed to another?
In the rather fluid species definition of Bacteria, the genome is the most important thing. It alone defines the characteristics of the bacterium. Isn't this procedure a bit like (by very very dodgy analogy) implanting a sheep foetus into a goat and calling the whole thing a new hybrid?
Nothwithstanding the semantics of the use of the word species in the title, it does signal a small jump forward in the quest to design bacteria with particular properties.
There are a few more details here though this is a dynamic link that may not repsond for very long.
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