Two teams of scientists achieved a milestone – creation of bacteria that cannot survive without a specific artificial chemical, says Reuters, “potentially overcoming a major obstacle to wider use of genetically modified organisms.” While the work involved bacteria, “there is no fundamental barrier” to applying the technique to plants or animals, one of the lead scientists, George Church of Harvard, told reporters, according to the story.
In their work, the scientists created strains of E. coli bacteria that contain DNA for a synthetic amino acid and require artificial amino acids to survive, said Reuters. The team made 49 genetic changes to E. coli bacteria to make them dependent on the synthetic amino acid. Church said the possibility of a microbe overcoming all those changes was infinitely small.