File this one under scary. A group of Frankenstein-like scientists have announced the creation of a synthetic organism that has been stripped to its most basic state of being. The organism has the fewest genes required to multiply and live, something scientists say may help reveal “big insights” on the nature of life itself Post Guam reports: Genome research pioneer J. Craig Venter called the bacterial cell his research team designed and constructed the “most simple of all organisms.” While the human genome possesses more than 20,000 genes, the new organism gets by with only 473. “This study is definitely trying to understand a minimal basis of life,” said Venter. But the researchers said that even with such a simple organism, that understanding remained elusive. They noted that even though their organism has so few genes, they were still uncertain about the function of nearly a third of them, even after more than five years of work. The researchers predicted their work would yield practical applications in developing new medicines, biochemicals, biofuels and in agriculture. “Our long-term vision has been to design and build synthetic organisms on demand where you can add in specific functions and predict what the outcome [...]