Australia is currently joining an international team to develop artificial life through synthetic yeast, The Conversation confirmed. The project dubbed as Yeast 2.0 is aimed at "building the world's first synthetic eukaryotic genome together, " which involves a conglomeration of yeast laboratories in the U.S., UK, China, Singapore, India and Australia. The project is catered toward producing the first synthetic yeast by 2017.

Yeast 2.0 is a milestone in Australian research on the road to synthetic biology which involves synthetic genome that has the capacity to create endless possibility, a human being even without ancestor, organisms capable of medical diagnostic tests to track the smallest germ in water.

"Our research moves the needle in synthetic biology from theory to reality. This work represents the biggest step yet in an international effort to construct the full genome of synthetic yeast. It is the most extensively altered chromosome ever built. But the milestone that really counts is integrating it into a living yeast cell. We have shown that yeast cells carrying this synthetic chromosome are remarkably normal. They behave almost identically to wild yeast cells, only they now possess new capabilities and can do things that wild yeast cannot," Dr. Jef Boeke, a pioneer in synthetic biology and research head of Yeast 2.0, said.

"When you change the genome you're gambling. One wrong change can kill the cell. We have made over 50,000 changes to the DNA code in the chromosome and our yeast still live. That is remarkable. It shows that our synthetic chromosome is hardy, and it endows the yeast with new properties," Boeke added.

Members for the Yeast 2.0 project are based at NYU Langone and Johns Hopkins, Loyola University in Baltimore, BGI in Shenzhen, China, Tianjin University in China, Tsinghua University in China, MacQuarie University in Sydney, Australia, the Australian Wine Institute in Adelaide, Australia, the National University of Singapore, Imperial College, London, England and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Detailed information can be found here.