Scientists Create First Cell Controlled by Synthetic Genome

You know that when you modify a cell, you usually are using a DNA created out of scrap by oligo-dT primers and then have genetic recombination using annealing arms between that sequence or the host sequence. Or you can use microorganisms such as bacteria in order to transfer the genetic code. The article itself didn't specify whether the host cell had transcription factors that allowed it to process the DNA. Because it would be impossible for the DNA sequence to express itself without a transcription factor to connect to the promoter sequence and to activate the coding of the genes present in the engineered DNA strand. When we talk about an entirely synthetic cell the news article leaves out details about how much of the host cell was used and what types of enzymes, carbohydrates, and other structures were present before the new strand of DNA was introduced. The following sentence, "No machine can turn out a single piece of DNA anywhere close to that long, however. Instead, Venter and his colleagues started with many relatively small pieces of DNA. Then the scientists transferred DNA pieces back and forth between a yeast cell and E. coli bacteria, turning the many short pieces into fewer but longer DNA segments" indicates the possibility that they were able to identify restriction markers along the chromosome and simply performed numerous gene recombinations with the host strand until they got their completely synthesized DNA strands to replace the host strands. Again this is done often in biotechnology, it's just that no one bothers to transplant a whole genome because it's not very sensible or effective. Only certain genes are targeted for phenotypic attributes such as taste, color, or other factors and then a synthesized strand that is supposed to either disable those genes or insert new features is supposed to replace them via a specific sequence on the engineered plasmid or chromosome. It is an extension of what is normally done on many biotechnologically engineered crop strains in order to form better cultivars. Except they decided to try to do it for the whole genome... instead of focusing on a specific trait.