On July 11, 2002 in the laboratories of the State University of New York the first synthetic virus was created. This virus is relatively small in the genetic sense of the word (only containing a few thousand base pairs) and is known today as the polio virus. Because of its minuscule genetic makeup this virus was the most likely candidate for this type of experimentation. After the complete synthetic virus was created the researchers injected it into mice and amazingly is carried out its function like a normal polio virus. Eureka the first synthetic virus is born!
To create the polio virus the researchers downloaded the genetic makeup of the polio virus off of an internet server. Now the difference between polio and most other organisms is that its genetic makeup is composed of RNA as opposed to DNA. Since RNA can’t be synthetically created in a lab the researchers needed to translate the RNA base sequence into DNA (which can be synthetically made in a lab). With this DNA product the scientists added transcriptase to the mix along with the RNA bases and the lo and behold the RNA was formed. The scientists then created a “juice” for the RNA to create a virus within. This “juice” consisted of shredded u
p human cells. From this “juice” was extracted the nucleus, mitochondria and other cell structures not needed for viral reproduction.
On the other side of the world scientists made a startling discovery with experimentation on a virus to render mice infertile. This was an experiment solve the problem of controlling the mice populations where their numbers are a problem to the grain supplies. These scientists took a mouse pox virus and spliced in a section of mouse genome that codes for the production of interleukin-4 in the hopes that production of interleukin-4 would be enhanced in the mice. Interleukin-4 is a substance that aids in the immune systems response to foreign invaders. Supposedly the production of interleukin-4 would be so enhanced that it would recognize a mouse egg as foreign, and destroy it. Instead, almost all of the mice (which were immunized to mouse pox) died. For some reason the mice didn’t defend against the virus and it crippled the mice’s immune systems and the virus spread rapidly.
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