London, Jan. 25: Experiments to create the first man-made organism have started in the wake of the successful creation of the genetic code of a living thing from laboratory chemicals.

The first artificial genetic code — the software of life — and how to make it from scratch from four kinds of chemical was unveiled today by an American team, marking the completion of the second of three steps towards the dawn of synthetic life.

Efforts to finish the final step of transplanting the synthetic DNA into a cell are under way, though it takes some weeks to work out if a transplant has been successful. A team of 17 researchers at the J Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, describes in the journal Science how it has successfully created the largest man-made DNA structure, indeed the largest synthetic molecule, the circular genetic code of an artificial bacterium that it is now trying to breed in the lab.

The scientists led by the human genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter want to create new kinds of bacterium, living chemical factories if you like, to make new types of bugs which can be used as green fuels to replace oil and coal, digest toxic waste or absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The feat will trigger excitement and unease in equal measure along with widespread debate about the ethics of creating new species, which Dr Venter believes will be a major step in the history of our species. One critic of what some call Synthia put it more trenchantly: “God has competition.”

Rumours have circulated for weeks that they have achieved the feat but, speaking from Davos, Switzerland, Dr Venter tells The Daily Telegraph: “No we have not. There are a number of serious constraints on that happening and we are working diligently to get rid of them.”

The genetic codes — genomes — of all organisms are written in the chemical language of DNA and Dr Venter’s team used lab methods to make all 582,970 letters of a slightly modified version of the genome of a genital bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0. The name underlines how Dr Venter wants to rewrite the software of life so it can still run on the hardware of a bacterial cell.