Scientists just created chromosomes from scratch—"Huge"

In a milestone achievement, a whole chromosome has been created from scratch by scientists for the first time ever.

The tRNA Neochromosome is a man-made chromosome of the common baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It may soon allow for the creation of synthetic and superior yeast cells, according to a collection of new papers in the scientific journals Cell and Cell Genomics.

This discovery is the newest in an international project called Sc2.0, which has also synthesized all 16 of the yeast's chromosomes with an aim to combine them into a functional cell that might help make yeast faster, more resilient and more productive.

The tRNA Neochromosome is special, as it is entirely synthetic, not made based on one of the original chromosomes of the yeast.

"It is the world's first de novo synthetic chromosome," Patrick Cai, the chair in synthetic genomics at the University of Manchester, international coordinator of the Sc2.0 project, and co-author of the Cell paper, told Newsweek.