AAA<\/p>\n
Dr Hugh Goold watches as Sogna Ocello cleaves open a wheel of firm goat\u2019s cheese, wrapped in hay from the grassy slopes of northern Italy. Wielding a silver cheese plane, she spirits a cylindrical skein from its pale \u00adcentre and offers it forth. It melds with the tongue, offering umami and sweetgrass.<\/p>\n
I meet Goold, a synthetic biologist with the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), at Formaggi Ocello in Sydney\u2019s Surry Hills because it is a palace of devotion, of sorts, to microbial fungi: a kind of organism with which Goold has done something extraordinary. (Also, incidentally, he once moonlighted as a young researcher in London at a cheesemonger that served Buckingham Palace.) Stilton, he explains, is made by lancing cheese \u00adinoculated by Penicillium \u00adroqueforti spores with steel spikes to produce peppery streaks of blue funk. Another species of the fungus forms the bloomy rind of a triple cream brie he also insists we try, and which is so silky-buttery it makes your eyes roll back. He picks out a spicy buffalo milk number next, and then an \u00adoozing glob scooped from a craterous vat of gorgonzola.<\/p>\n
The fungi that transmogrify milk, salt and rennet into these delights belong to the same category of organisms as humans: the eukaryotes. Unlike the primitive, single-celled prokaryotes \u2013 which are mostly bacteria \u2013 most eukaryotes are a riot of complexity, characterised by a nucleus of DNA encased in a membrane. This vast domain of eukaryotic organisms spans from gnats to iguanas, death adders to ducklings, jellyfish, ironbarks, leeches, liverworts, cats, gibbons and whale lice.<\/p>\n
![\"Dr](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/b89cfa35ee41b03d2a2d350add680d6c2b1ac585.jpeg\")
Dr Hugh Goold, synthetic biologist and cheese enthusiast, at Formaggi Ocello in Sydney\u2019s Surry Hills.Steven Siewert<\/p>\n
A fungal candidate, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer\u2019s yeast, was selected from this broad \u00admenagerie by a daring global project bridging the gap between nature\u2019s organisms and those made by human hand. The result will soon grow: yeast with an entirely synthetic genome. Collaborators from at least 10 international \u00adinstitutions have spent 20 years building each of the organism\u2019s 16 chromosomes in a quest to gain unprecedented control, and knowledge, over its blueprint. Goold announced last year that he and his colleagues had completed the final one in a Sydney lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n Already, using gene-edited microbes<\/a>, synthetic biologists have formulated biological factories capable of crafting cancer drugs, spider silk, hallucinogenic psilocybin and \u201cbarramundi\u201d meat. Fully synthetic yeast could deliver even greater acts of microbial alchemy and usher in a new era of biological knowledge.<\/p>\n First we learnt to read DNA. Then we edited it. Now we are learning to write.<\/p>\n Next, each of the artificial chromosomes, including Goold\u2019s, will be united at the New York University lab of project leader Professor Jef Boeke. When that mote of yeast shudders into existence, it will be the first organism within our biological domain with genetics wholly crafted by humans, via computers and robots. The first synthetically designed eukaryote. An entity with digital ancestry.<\/p>\n Life, 2.0.<\/p>\n Ian Paulsen is a man who can\u2019t stop moving. Zoom meetings with the Macquarie University \u00admicrobiology professor are notorious for motion \u00adsickness: within seconds he grabs his laptop and \u00adbegins violently pacing. On the meeting table in his office lies a rainbow slinky, silicon fidget toys and a miniature Japanese Zen garden gifted to him by \u00adcolleagues. \u201cI\u2019m sort of hyperactive,\u201d he explains. \u201cI like to fiddle with things.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision to build one of yeast\u2019s chromosomes from scratch, made by Paulsen and Macquarie\u2019s \u00adresearch chief Professor Sakkie Pretorius about 13 years ago, lay somewhere between ambitious and \u00adabsurd. The only published paper at the time on building chromosomes was as helpful as hieroglyphics. But their efforts quickly built hype. NSW\u2019s first chief \u00adscientist, Mary O\u2019Kane, came on board alongside the state government, interested in the project\u2019s potential to revolutionise agriculture by unlocking better \u00admethods of improving crop and livestock genetics.<\/p>\n The DPI hired Goold and his decade of gruelling lab work began. Surfing the momentum, Paulsen launched the Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, funded by the Australian Research Council, in 2020. The \u00adcentre, headquartered at Macquarie, now hosts \u00adalmost 300 people working across nine Australian universities and has spun-out a dozen start-ups, all sprouting around the project dubbed Yeast 2.0.<\/p>\n Paulsen was once a synthetic genome naysayer. In the early 2000s, he worked at the then Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland alongside the \u00adpioneering scientists gunning to handcraft the \u00adchromosome of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bacterial parasite of cows. \u201cI was like, \u2018That\u2019s crazy. That\u2019s never going to work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In 2010, the late genomic visionary J. Craig Venter announced it was done. Venter and his team had coaxed their DNA into a cell and it divided into the first synthetic lifeform, albeit a simple, unicellular prokaryote with only one chromosome. They called it Synthia. The groundwork was laid for Yeast 2.0, an undertaking at least 10 times larger in terms of raw genetic material and vastly more complex.<\/p>\n Paulsen tells me this while striding into the Australian Genome Foundry, a synthetic biology lab that partly grew out of the yeast project. It\u2019s an echo of Paulsen\u2019s childhood in Melbourne\u2019s working-class Clayton, where the sci-fi mad schoolkid spent holidays shovelling sand and lugging metal moulds around the foundry his father worked in.<\/p>\n Paulsen\u2019s foundry deals not in molten metal but in liquid life. Robots resembling giant hi-tech microwaves hum on benches: they can clone, culture and edit DNA<\/a> and cells at a superhuman rate. Blue-gloved young \u00adscientists hunch over microscopes and murmur in pairs. The banner-like flame of a bunsen burner ripples while a towering blender nearby mixes a liquid that\u2019s possibly alive and as bright orange as carrot juice.<\/p>\n \u201cMolecular biology researchers in labs spend most of their time doing boring, repetitive stuff, sitting and transferring small volumes of liquid from one tube to the other,\u201d Paulsen says. \u201cThey\u2019re like skilled artisans in the 15th century, doing careful work but not high-throughput. This foundry is the industrial revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n The pace of computer science is governed by Moore\u2019s Law, which is derived from an observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years. The acceleration of synthetic biology eats Moore\u2019s Law for breakfast. When Paulsen was a PhD student in the 1990s, it took him 18 months to sequence one gene. Now Ancestry.com labs can scan 700,000 genetic markers in a vial of spit in a matter of days. (In this way I recently discovered I\u2019m 7 per cent Norwegian. Hallo!) Price has also plunged: it cost $36 million to sequence a human genome<\/a> in 2006. Now companies do it for $115. The utopian promises of biological engineering have often stalled as manipulating life proved harder than expected. But with robots, and now AI, scientific capability is catching up to the hype. It\u2019s within this foundry Goold and his colleagues finished synXVI: the 16th yeast chromosome.<\/p>\n To build the yeast chromosome \u2013 a long, compact coil of DNA, which itself is a double helix of four chemicals dubbed A, C, G and T \u2013 scientists ordered tiny strings of these \u201cletters\u201d from a company that makes custom DNA. \u201cUsing the natural chromosome as a template, we grafted small chunks of the human-made DNA into the chromosome, one part at a time,\u201d says Dr Paige Erpf, a biologist with Paulsen\u2019s centre.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Chromosomes are a tangle of genes, mutations and repeats spelled out by these letters, scrambled and rewritten over countless generations and cell divisions. Designing chromosomes on computers and then making them from scratch allows scientists to order this evolutionary chaos by organising important genes into specific locations and deleting unneeded DNA, as the process helps \u00adreveal which parts of the genome are redundant. This synthetic-biology approach seeks to make cells almost like programmable computer chips. For yeast, Erpf says, \u201cwe can turn it into a really simple cell factory instead of having all this other shit we don\u2019t actually need\u201d. Their hope is that seizing total genetic control of microbes will result in perfect biofactories that can \u00adfinally fully replace products we glean from oil, from fuel to plastics, weaning humanity further off petrol.<\/p>\n Related Article<\/p>\n But yeast\u2019s output is moving beyond bioethanol and beer to the genomes of other species; engineered life begetting life. Scientists need a living tool to stitch DNA chunks into more eukaryotic chromosomes, which are millions of \u201cletters\u201d long. \u201cAnd yeast is fabulous at stitching pieces of DNA together,\u201d Paulsen says back in his office, cradling a two-litre bottle of mango ice tea. \u201cIt\u2019s one of its magical powers.\u201d<\/p>\n The creation of the first synthetic plant chromosome<\/a> using yeast is already under way and could unlock drought-proof, ultra-nutritious, pest-defying crops. By 2100, the climate crisis may have slashed the production of six \u00adstaple crops<\/a> humanity \u00adrelies on by a quarter, if carbon pollution continues to rise. Scientists hope that new crops, customised more completely than those with tweaked genes, could help feed us in the future. They have started with the most sacred of vegetables: the potato.<\/p>\n Yeast will stitch the chromosome together before it\u2019s transferred into moss, and then potato cells. \u201cPlants take a really long time to grow,\u201d Erpf says. \u201cYeast grows overnight. If we can build the \u00adsynthetic chromosome \u2013 or big chunks of it \u2013 in the yeast first, extract it and add that into the plant, you\u2019re literally turning a potential five-year experiment into six months.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s not all. In June last year, UK scientists announced their intention<\/a> to pursue a goal long \u00adconsidered both audacious and taboo: the creation of a synthetic human chromosome. (As it happens, yeast is involved.)<\/p>\n The creators of Synthia encoded secret messages within the bacteria\u2019s DNA. One is related to words scrawled on the blackboard of Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, discovered after his death in 1988: \u201cWhat I cannot create I do not \u00adunderstand.\u201d It\u2019s a go-to line for synthetic biologists, including Patrick Cai, a synthetic genomics professor at the University of Manchester. He served as the \u00adinternational coordinator for the Yeast 2.0 project. Now he\u2019s a major collaborator on the Synthetic Human Genome Project, a new push to make a human chromosome from scratch funded by the Wellcome Trust, a multibillion-dollar biomedical charity chaired by former prime minister Julia Gillard.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past we never got to this point,\u201d Cai tells me via a video call. \u201cCan we start writing the book, the code of life, and try to understand the meaning of it?\u201d<\/p>\n The Human Genome Project was a $US3 billion moonshot completed in 2003, allowing us to read our entire genetic code. Then came CRISPR<\/a>, the editing tool used to tweak or delete strips of DNA. It has been harnessed to treat sickle cell disease, fix some types of blindness in a small trial, shred cancer tumours and attempt to eventually \u201cde-extinct\u201d<\/a> woolly mammoths<\/a> by making mutant Asian elephant cells.<\/p>\n Where will writing DNA lead us? According to \u00adsynthetic biologist Andrew Hessel, who spearheads an American effort to make artificial chromosomes, writing DNA could cure any disease, undo every \u00adgenetic affliction, and detonate a \u201cmodern Cambrian explosion of new creatures of all shapes and sizes\u201d (Hessel is a futurist, it should be noted, a species prone to fabulism).<\/p>\n Cai is more cautious. \u201cThat transition from reading to writing is quite difficult,\u201d he says. \u201cKids can read lots and lots of books, but when they write the first piece of a more imaginative piece of work, it\u2019s very challenging. But I think we\u2019re really at a cusp of making that transition now.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article<\/p>\n What 98 per cent of our DNA does is a mystery. This so-called \u201cdark genome<\/a>\u201d doesn\u2019t code for proteins and was once considered junk, useless as evolutionary leftovers such as tailbones and wisdom teeth. But scientists are beginning to discover that this shadow realm can drive gene expression and cellular function. Building synthetic chromosomes casts a torch into this darkness, sorting the critical parts of it from the chaff.<\/p>\n And what of sci-fi fears of altering human chromosomes and the changes being passed to children? It\u2019s unlikely the current iteration of the UK project, though, will get as far as building an entire human chromosome, according to analysis by Francis Crick Institute lead Professor Robin Lovell-Badge. He also stressed no one\u2019s trying to make a synthetic human, yet: \u201cWe have no idea how to do this and it is likely to be very unsafe.\u201d A more realistic early application is growing disease-resistant cells from synthetic DNA that could repopulate blighted livers or hearts.<\/p>\n One anxiety that hangs over synthetic biology is the accidental \u2013 or deliberate \u2013 rise of new infectious foes<\/a>. Lovell-Badge advocated for the engineering of a \u201ckill switch\u201d into any synthetic human chromosome: an easily triggered mechanism that can self-destruct any artificial life gone awry. Such a trigger is under consideration, Cai says. \u201cOur job is to try to quantify the risk, but also make sure the benefit outweighs the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n The imagination of the public, reared on the sci\u2011fi visions of Jurassic Park, Gattaca, Alien: Earth and other Hollywood mutants can sometimes overstate the \u00adcapabilities, and therefore risk, of synthetic biology<\/a>. Take the idea of backyard bioterrorists brewing up new viruses. \u201cThe thing is, synthetic \u00adbiology is really hard,\u201d says Macquarie University bioethicist Professor Wendy Rogers. \u201cThe idea that some lone terrorist can order some DNA components and make a weapon in his garage is fantastical.\u201d State \u00adactors with well-geared labs, she says, are a more troubling threat.<\/p>\n \u2018You kind of all of a sudden realise you have so much power over life \u00aditself. It\u2019s a very humbling experience.\u2019<\/p>\n Patrick Cai, professor of synthetic genomics<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the matter of who might own synthetic chromosomes. In 1995, Myriad Genetics filed an Australian patent over the BRCA1 gene, which \u00adincreases a carrier\u2019s chance of breast and ovarian \u00adcancer. The patent gave the company exclusive rights over the isolation and diagnosis of the genes, preventing other labs from \u00adoffering alternate \u2013 and cheaper \u2013 testing. Queensland breast cancer survivor Yvonne D\u2019Arcy took the company to the High Court, which ruled in 2015<\/a> that genetic material cannot be owned.<\/p>\n \u201cThe patent system is not really set up to deal with things like DNA,\u201d says Dr Alison McLennan, a legal expert in synthetic biology at the University of Canberra. \u201cFor naturally occurring human DNA, we don\u2019t invent it, it\u2019s just there.\u201d That changes with \u00adsynthetic DNA, which can be patented and owned. \u201cIs that the kind of thing that we should give exclusive rights over \u2013 should anyone be able to control who can access it, who can benefit?\u201d<\/p>\n Those in the field are keenly aware that society may buck against their offerings, as many have rejected vaccines and GM foods. Paulsen\u2019s centre and the UK synthetic human genome project have bioethicists and social scientists baked into their structures to study public fears and build social licence. A 2021 study<\/a> showed curiosity, hope, fear and anger overrule facts in \u00adpeople\u2019s assessment of synthetic biology. Scientists must win hearts, not just minds, in their quest to write the genetics of a new world.<\/p>\n Cai once worked as an engineer, coding computers. Now he\u2019s coding life. Does it feel different? \u201cI think it\u2019s both exciting but also a bit worrying, if that\u2019s the right way to say it,\u201d he says after a pause. \u201cYou kind of all of a sudden realise you have so much power over life \u00aditself. It\u2019s a very humbling experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Synthetic biology in Australia has reached a funding cliff. Paulsen\u2019s Centre of Excellence is coming to the end of its funding cycle while the other major hotbed of activity, CSIRO, has lost pace in the field. Paulsen\u2019s uncontainable energy has bent \u00adtowards keeping the show on the road.<\/p>\n In a Parliament House alcove last month, Paulsen hosted a charm offensive event where the centre\u2019s start-up founders showed off biodegradable buttons<\/a> built by saltwater bacteria out of seaweed. Some are looking to countries such as Japan and the US, which have federal strategies in synthetic biology and deep investments in biotech infrastructure. Australia lacks both. \u201cWe\u2019ve spun out 12 start-up companies that have collectively raised $230 million of venture capital and created 200 jobs, and those companies have a collective valuation in excess of a billion dollars,\u201d Paulsen told the crowd, including a smattering of MPs. \u201cI\u2019m going to say that\u2019s a 40-to-one return on government investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in the lab, research has focused on the new frontier of \u201cbiohybrids\u201d, where biology fuses directly with computers, in part an effort to keep funding boards jazzed about synthetic biology. Paulsen and Erpf have kidnapped an engineering student and charged him with splicing yeast with photoreceptive genes that can be controlled with blue light: an effort to meld yeast with the electrical<\/a>.<\/p>\n Goold, for his part, has won a $US400,000 grant from US conservation organisation Revive & Restore to fund his next project with DPI<\/a>. He\u2019s using lessons from Yeast 2.0 to hunt heat-resistant genes in microalgae, with the hope insights may be transferred to kelp and save their imperilled underwater forests. \u201cThis technology is successful if it gives us the security that we can operate as \u2018businesses as usual\u2019, despite things like climate change and scarcity,\u201d he says. \u201cAustralia needs to come up with its own solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n Three technologies will define the next century. AI gets enough airtime. Quantum computing received $1 billion of government funding in a single whack in 2024. Synthetic biology is the third wheel in this revolutionary triad. How well Australia capitalises on its promises is yet to be seen.<\/p>\n In Synthia lies another quote scientists wrote in the language of life. \u201cSee things not as they are,\u201d reads the line from American Prometheus, the biography of atom-bomb physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. \u201cBut as they might be.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"M.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/690abc6951d9c03ee09548b57101e363035d67f81282ae6b3152259ca0408465.jpeg\")
M. mycoides JCVI-syn1: also known as Synthia, a single-celled bacteria with a synthetic chromosome.NCMIR\/University of California<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/dc8e8a3f963fb2e262df18b11bf223e77e68a706.jpeg\")
A high-throughput bioreactor at the Australian Genome Foundry.Steven Siewert<\/p>\n![\"Ian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/4bbcec8ffc53bfd7671ec8206018e1e27ec3ab1d.jpeg\")
Ian Paulsen\u2019s centre has drawn almost 300 scientists and spun out 12 startups.Steven Siewert<\/p>\n![\"Current](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/9251f1c11428fe7ef3130f2493948c005ce43e9b.jpeg\")
Current technology could \u201cde-extinct\u201d mammoths \u2013 or at least create a mammoth-elephant mutant. What next?Louise Kennerley<\/p>\n![\"Ian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/952bd70f5de49f53a73e90d25bc0cc71a74e849af2c17befe1769ab55986b631.jpeg\")
Ian Paulsen makes his pitch to a crowd gathered for a \u2018Biomade in Australia\u2019 event at Parliament House last month.Centre of Excellence for Synthetic Biology<\/p>\n