First ever synthetic man made chromosome!:

Originally posted by sonhouse
100% man made, this could lead to a completely artificial life form!

I don't think so. To make a totally new artificial life form from scratch takes much more than that.

What a journalist writes, with his limited knowledge of the subject, might be far from the truth. We know that when we read articles on subjects that we are experts ourselves.

Nothing, but a flying pig, would change my opinion in this.

Originally posted by sonhouse
100% man made, this could lead to a completely artificial life form!

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/4958/20140330/artificial-yeast-chromosome-created-from-scratch-could-revolutionize-biofuel-and-medical-industries.htm

Well in gact not 100% man made. They took an existing chromosome and changed it.
From the paper: Here, we report the synthesis of a functional 272,871–base pair designer eukaryotic chromosome, synIII, which is based on the 316,617–base pair native Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome III.

So they actuall took a chromosome and cut out abouut 10% fiddled with it, that they got the right from and reinserted it.

To be sure that is a BIG thing, but really, really far from making a chromosome from scratch! Even science journalist are not a reliable source if things are complicated.