Credit: Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology

World’s first eukaryotic cell containing only a single chromosome

Qin Zhongjun, a molecular biologist at the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences of the Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his collaborators recently created the world’s first eukaryotic cell containing only a single chromosome.

This is a milestone in synthetic biology. It establishes a bridge between prokaryotes and eukaryotes in genome evolution and improves our understanding of the nature of life. The research results were published online in the journal Nature on Aug 1, 2018.