Craig Venter Comes One Step Closer To World Domination

US genomics pioneer Craig Venter, best known for his success with the Human Genome_Project, informed the world today of his groups success in converting one type of bacteria into another:

Venter's team, led by John Glass of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, US, managed to transfer the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides to a related parasite called M. capricolum. Both species infect goats, sheep and cows.

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The researchers took a strain of M. mycoides that is resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline, broke open the cells and carefully "digested" the proteins, leaving just the intact circular chromosomes, the DNA.

These chromosomes were then incubated with M. capricolum cells in a polymer medium that encourages cell membranes to fuse. The researchers speculate that some M. capricolum cells fused together, encapsulating an M. mycoides chromosome as they did so.

Finally, the researchers treated their cultures with tetracycline, so that only M. capricolum cells containing the M. mycoides genome would survive.

Venter's group is hailing the operation as a crucial step towards their goal of creating a synthetic life form, with the creation of a synthetic life form being a crucial step to creating an army of moldiers, and moldiers being a crucial step towards world domination. Clearly, because nobody tinkering around in the field of biology has ever done anything positive for humanity, this week's progress marks the beginning for the end of mankind as well as the beginning of what will come to be known as "Venter's Reign of Terror."

Read the article here on NewScientist.com