Scientists put a genetic code transplant of one bacteria into another related bacteria. This is the most exciting experiment that changes a living organism with a completely different one.

Biologists had already discovered how to add short DNA sequence to microbes and modify them. This research allows not only to take one gene, but the whole genome from one organism to another.

"This is equivalent to changing a Macintosh computer to a PC by inserting a new piece of software," said Craig Venter, genome mapping scientist.

In this experiment scientists changed a one cell organism Mycoplasma capricolum into Mycoplasma mycoides. These bacteria are innocuous goat pathogens and they both lack an outer membrane, facilitating genome transfer.

Mycoplasma mycoides genome was added to a test tube of Mycoplasma capricolum. Four days later the host bacteria showed it’s taken the inserted DNA.

This experiment proves scientist can take an entire genome and insert it into a living organism. The organism can completely express foreign DNA in this case. The next innovation scientists are going to is to create a synthetic genome and then insert it into a living organism.

"It's a key enabling step," said Venter. "Synthetic biology still remains to be proven, but now we are much closer to knowing it's absolutely theoretically possible."

The experiment is successful, but it has still left of questions unanswered. One of these questions is how the added genome replaced the existing one, how the transmission of the genomes took place. by Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ.com