Craig Venter, who booted up the first synthetic cell, dies at 79

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In 2010, Craig Venter and his colleagues took a bacterial genome they had designed on a computer, assembled it from chemical building blocks, transplanted it into an empty cell, and watched the cell start dividing. The result, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0, was the first organism alive on Earth whose parents were a hard drive and a chemistry set. — Read the rest The post Craig Venter, who booted up the first synthetic cell, dies at 79 appeared first on Boing Boing.