A team of scientists from the J. Craig Venter Institute (United States) have successfully assembled the genome (hereditary traits of an organism encoded as a sequence of base pairs in DNA molecules) of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0, by artificial means. Although scientists have long been able to make synthetic DNA, they were only successful for DNA chains of short length, having a maximum of about 32 base pairs. The scientific team successfully assembled the genome with a length of 583,000 base pairs. An attempt is being planned to insert the artificial genome into an empty cell and “boot” it up to obtain a living cell that functions on the artificial genome. The technology could reportedly spark applications for “creating new types of microorganisms that could be used in numerous ways, such as green fuels to replace oil and coal, digest toxic waste or absorb greenhouse gases”..