Difficulty: Medium

Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds

The passage below has been adapted from an article by Clive Cookson originally published in the Financial Times, July 2012.

Craig Venter, king of the genome, has been uncharacteristically quiet for a couple of years since his laboratory created the world’s first synthetic life form, a microbe whose genes were made entirely from inanimate chemicals. Some critics downplayed Venter’s achievement in 2010 because he did not make a novel form of life. The project was a technical tour de force, a demonstration that scientists could move on from reading to writing genes, but it reproduced an existing microbe called Mycoplasma Mycoides, with just a few “watermarking” additions to distinguish its DNA from the natural bacterium.

Now his teams are well on the way to making synthetic microbes distinctly different to anything in nature. “We have a design contest to come up with a genome designed completely in a computer,” Venter says. “Three different versions of the genome are being constructed now and we hope to know by the end of the summer whether any of these designs will work as a living cell.”

The designs are all attempts to find the “minimal genome”, the least DNA with the fewest genes capable of sustaining a free-living organism. The smallest microbial genome in nature belongs to Mycoplasma Genitalium, with 525 genes encoded in 580,000 chemical “letters” of DNA. The question is how much DNA is truly essential for life and how much is unnecessary clutter resulting from undirected Darwinian evolution. Some natural algae make liquid hydrocarbons similar to transport fuels, though not in the huge quantities that would be required to replace standard petrol and diesel. “It’s clear that production from natural algae could never approach the amounts we need, because they have not evolved to do anything with so much oil,” Venter says.

Although synthetic biology will be required, this need not involve redesigning the whole algal genome. Rather, he says, it may be better to supplement it by adding an extra synthetic chromosome designed for maximum fuel production. Always ambitious, Venter feels that he is just getting into his stride at the age of 65. Concluding our interview, he says: “We are trying to understand the fundamental principles for the design of life, so that we can redesign it – in the way an intelligent designer would have done in the first place, if there had been one.”

1 – Which is the most accurate analogy to describe Venter’s achievement in 2010, as the critics described it?

• A Producing a cover of an original song
• B Artistically rendering a 3D object on a 2D canvas
• C Building a functioning vehicle out of spare parts and scrap
• D Growing plants outside of their natural habitat

2 – Throughout the passage, naturally occurring, organic genomes are considered by Venter as:

• A Unnatural
• B Inefficient
• C Useless
• D Undersized

3 – Which of the following could not be reasonably inferred about Venter based on information provided in the passage?

• A He does not believe in God
• B He believes in Darwin’s theory of evolution
• C He is a leading expert in the field of genomic research
• D He is usually quite talkative

Select text below to highlight answers:

Q1: A
“Some critics downplayed Venter’s achievement in 2010 because he did not make a novel form of life… reproduced an existing microbe called Mycoplasma Mycoides” A synthetic production of an already existent organism. If the organism is the original song, Venter produced a ‘cover’ of it, recreating it in a novel way.

Q2: B
“The question is how much DNA is truly essential for life and how much is unnecessary clutter resulting from undirected Darwinian evolution”
Venter seeks to identify the minimum amount of genetic material required to sustain life; suggests there is an unnecessary excess in organic genomes (more than is required to perform a function is indicative of inefficiency.) He doesn’t claim that organic (naturally occurring) genomes are useless, just that they are oversized for his purposes.

Q3: D
By process of elimination.
Venter refers to evolutionary processes a number of times and the journalist refers to Darwin to clarify these references for the reader.
The final sentence ‘…as an intelligent designer would have done in the first place, if there had been one’ is a crack at God, implying that he does not exist (or alternatively that He is stupid creator, but if that was his intention then Venter does not believe in an all knowing and powerful ‘God’ in the conventional sense).
C is reasonably inferred from his nickname ‘king of the genome’.
That leaves D. You might rule out D after reading the sentence ‘..has been uncharacteristically quiet’, however, this is not obviously a reference to his sociability but more likely speaks to his tendency to publicise his research.