Refactoring Bacteriophage T7 (2004 version)

Abstract

Natural biological systems are selected by evolution to continue to exist. Evolution might give rise to complicated systems that are difficult to discover, measure, model, and direct. Here, we redesign the genome of a natural biological system, bacteriophage T7, in order to specify an engineered alternative that is easier to study, understand, and extend. We replaced the left 11,515 base pairs of the wild-type genome with 12,179 base pairs of redesigned DNA. The resulting chimeric genome encodes a viable bacteriophage that maintains key features of the original while being simpler to model and easier to manipulate.