'closely related' is relative, mitochondrial DNA is fairly conservative Replacing mitochondrial DNA might be possible but afaik hasn't been accomplished to date
I suggest reading the other paper on the single-chromosome yeast. They CRISPR (basically) all the yeast chromosomes together while deleting a bunch of centromeres and telomeres. The same technique can be used to assemble a chromosome from smaller DNA fragments.
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It's an interesting idea, but the problem here is scale. Eukaryotic genomes are generally *massive* (though yeast is a notable exception). Getting 3 billion bp of DNA into a single cell is gonna be really, really hard.
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Though there's an interesting convergence here with another conversation I was having yesterday, on the feasibility of making, say, a mouse (or human) 'minimal genome.'
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It's likely that 70-90% of the human genome is non-functional, so if you could strip that out, the problem becomes somewhat simpler.
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Yes. This conversation has convinced me that removing mitochondria outright may be, er, a challenge. I still think we'll have a single-chromosome, printed mammal in five years or less.
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I think that's extremely unlikely, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
End of conversation
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