Synthetic viruses—Anything new?
Fig 1
The generation of synthetic poxviruses as described by Evans and colleagues and cloning of synthetic DNA using TAR in yeast are illustrated. Synthesized DNA fragments are assembled and cloned in a set of plasmids containing overlapping DNA fragments. Release of cloned DNA fragments from plasmids creates a set of overlapping DNA fragments that can recombine in yeast (TAR cloning) to form a YAC/BAC (left side) or in helpervirus-infected cells to rescue poxviruses (right side). The yeast hub is versatile and allows for the generation of synthetic viruses, bacteria, and even eukaryotic chromosomes. BAC, bacterial artificial chromosome; TAR, transformation-associated recombination; YAC, yeast artificial chromosome.