The Department of Energy has given a $3 million award to Dr. J. Craig Venter of the Institute for Genomic Research to develop the best possible approximation to an artificially created living cell.

The ability to create a living cell from scratch, by chemically synthesizing all its components, is far beyond present technology. But several years ago Dr. Clyde Hutchinson of the University of North Carolina tried an alternative route to the same goal by taking one of the simplest known bacteria, Myoplasma genitalium, and trying to define the minimum number of genes it needed to survive by stripping out all the unnecessary ones. He reported in 1999 that the microbe could get by with as few as 265 genes, which could be thought of as the minimal set of genes needed for life.
A piece of DNA containing these genes might in principle be synthesized and inserted into a cell that had also been assembled artificially, probably with bits and pieces from other cells.

Dr. Venter has now resumed Dr. Hutchison's project. If he succeeds in creating a minimalist organism, he may then try to add useful functions to it, he told The Washington Post, which first reported the project in today's issue.