Which Is a Reliable Approach in the Generation of Artificial Minichromosomes, Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

Abstract

Summary Artificial minichromosomes are exciting transgenic tools because they replicate and segregate autonomously and are not integrated into the host genome. They enable efficient delivery of an extremely large gene or multiple genes with high stability. There are two approaches to construct artificial minichromosomes: bottom-up and top-down. The construction of artificial minichromosomes addresses the basic questions of the structure and function of chromosomes. Advances in DNA synthesis technology will open a new era of generating artificial minichromosomes.

Planimal Cells: Artificial Photosynthetic Animal Cells Inspired by Endosymbiosis and Photosynthetic Animals

“…The third approach is the generation of chimeric chromosomes derived from the genomes of both algae and animals. Synthetic genomics research on artificial chromosomes is accelerating (Fujimoto and Matsunaga 2016) and a project to synthesize all 16 chromosomes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is underway (Mitchell et al 2017). Because a 770 kb-chromosome of yeast has already been completely synthesized (Shen et al 2017), plastid genomes, which generally range in size from 120 to 170 kb (Shaw et al 2007), could now be completely synthesized.…”