We did Haemophilus influenzae and then the smallest genome of a self replicating organism, that of Mycoplasma genitalium.

Our first thought about synthetic genomics came when we sequenced the second genome back in 1995, and that from mycoplasma genitalium.

This company, Synthetic Genomics, I'm involved with, created the first full synthetic genome for a little bug, a very primitive creature called Mycoplasma genitalium.

Not only does it do that if you took the genome that synthetic genome and you plugged it into a different critter, like yeast, you now turn that yeast into Mycoplasma.

In 2008, we reported the complete synthesis of the Mycoplasma genitalium genome, a little over 500,000 letters of genetic code, but we have not yet succeeded in booting up that chromosome.

Because of the problems with Mycoplasma genitalium and its slow growth about a year and a half ago, we decided to synthesize the much larger chromosome, the mycoides chromosome, knowing that we had the biology worked out on that for transplantation.