On May 20, 2010, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland published results describing the successful construction of the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell.

The team synthesized the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides genome. The synthetic cell was called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and was the proof of principle that genomes can be designed in the computer, chemically made in the laboratory and transplanted into a recipient cell to produce a new self-replicating cell controlled only by the synthetic genome.

This research was published Science Express.