After media reported that a group of senior military officers in Gabon seized power on Wednesday, some Western countries condemned the military coup. The coup in Gabon, which comes a month after Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum was taken hostage by the troops of presidential guard, showed that the overall influence of Western countries, which have been promoting political system reforms and governance models in Africa, have largely failed, some Chinese experts said.

The West's primary concerns about the coup are not about humanitarian issues in Gabon but rather the fear that a new government that is not pro-West might take power, some experts said.

A group of senior Gabonese military officers appeared on the Gabon 24 TV station early Wednesday and announced the cancellation of the August 26 presidential election, the "end of the regime" and the dissolution of "all institutions of the Republic," France 24 reported.

The statement came shortly after the results of the presidential election were declared, which gave President Ali Bongo 64.2 percent of the vote and a third term in office, according to media reports.

The US said the situation in the African country is "deeply concerning." White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the US remains "a supporter of the people in the region, a supporter of the people of Gabon and of their demand for democratic governance," according to media reports.

France condemned the military coup in Gabon and is closely monitoring developments in the country, and reaffirmed its wish that the outcome of the election, once known, be respected, French government spokesman Olivier Veran was quoted as saying in media reports.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday that "China is closely following the developments in Gabon. We call on relevant sides in the country to proceed from the fundamental interests of the nation and the people, resolve differences peacefully through dialogue, restore order at an early date."

The Chinese Embassy in Gabon issued a consular notice on Wednesday local time, stating that due to the current situation in the country, the embassy has activated its emergency mechanism for significant unexpected incidents. It also advised all Chinese citizens in Gabon to stay at home and not venture outside.

"Elections in the African region have their uniqueness and cannot be judged solely on the surface. For example, the overthrow of Mali's president Keita in 2020, who was elected by a large majority, is a case in point," You Tao, deputy director of the research center for francophone world development at Sichuan International Studies University, told the Global Times.

The people's level of satisfaction with their lives, their assessment of good governance, and their views on social fairness are sometimes not fully expressed through elections, You said.

A fundamental reason for the coup in Gabon is primarily due to Gabon's relatively low level of governance and inefficacy in administration, Song Wei, a professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times.

"The core of this issue is its influence from former Western colonial powers and the governance and political system reforms that the West has been pushing in Africa since the Cold War. These reforms have not laid the foundation for Africa to innately produce democracy," she said.

Thus, the West's overall promotion of governance in Africa has essentially been a failure, she said.

Following the military coup in Niger, France "fully supports" the Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS) decision to activate a standby military force on the borders of the Sahel country, media reported earlier in August. Macron also said recently that France's ambassador to Niger will stay in the country despite pressure to leave from leaders of the coup.

The turmoil in West Africa has a strong contagion effect, especially with the high success rates of coups and the lack of strong intervention by the international community, which greatly emboldens African military factions, You said.

France, as a former colonial power, has always been committed to maintaining the stability of its former colonies, the expert noted. However, due to the current Russia-Ukraine conflict on Europe's doorstep and the heavy colonial burden it carries, France appears to be indecisive in its actions.

"If the Gabon coup succeeds, the French government will certainly not stand idly by. After all, the Bongo family has maintained good personal relationships with successive French presidents, and national interests are highly intertwined. France cannot afford to lose Gabon," You added.

Editor's Note:

"The Chinese people value friendship. We never forget our old friends, nor your historic contributions to promoting the growth of China-US relations and enhancing friendship between the two peoples," Chinese President Xi Jinping said during the meeting with former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger in Beijing, on July 20, 2023, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

In the last few years, when China-US relations were at a low ebb, people-to-people exchanges between the two countries have never been interrupted. 

How should the two civilizations of China and the US coexist to bring prosperity and stability to their people?

From serving at the grassroots to being the Chinese President, Xi has been a consistent builder of friendship with the American people.

This story is a part of the "Witness to history" series by the Global Times, comprising of comprehensive interviews with people who have witnessed Xi's high regard for and personal efforts in promoting people-to-people friendship between China and the US. They have also actively demonstrated to the world that the will of the Chinese and American people is to cooperate, and how such cooperation is beneficial to the people of the two countries and the world.

As a businessman shuttling back and forth between China and the US, Gary Dvorchak accepted to give an exclusive interview to the Global Times, when he returned to his home in Muscatine, a tranquil city on the banks of the Mississippi River in the central US state of Iowa, at a house located at No. 2911 Bonnie Drive.

Nearly 40 years ago, when a visiting Chinese official spent the night in No. 2911 in Dvorchak's bedroom while he was away at college, no one imagined that the visitor would one day become the Chinese president.

This is believed to be Xi Jinping's first trip outside China and perhaps his first experience of staying with an American family, according to Xinhua. He was then a young and promising junior official, Party secretary of Zhengding County in China's northern province of Hebei. He led a five-person agricultural delegation to Muscatine, Iowa.

At that time, in Dvorchak's house, Xi was hosted in a room that was decorated for elementary schoolboys, with a mini exhibition of American football wallpapers and Star Trek models.

Currently, Dvorchak hopes to expose more people to the atmosphere of friendly exchanges between China and the US. He is in the process of redecorating the house, which is scheduled to open to the public in October or November, "creating what we think will be a very professional and heartwarming symbolic project that benefits China-US relations," Dvorchak told the Global Times. 

"The friendship between the Chinese and American people deserves to be told more positively," he stressed.

Old house, new chapter

"It's [the house] a museum now, but our intention is probably to much more professionally tell the story of China in a very positive way, and promote people-to-people relationships between the American and Chinese citizens," Dvorchak said.

Dvorchak pointed out that Xi's visit in 1985 changed the course of his family's life forever.  

Muscatine is a very small town in Iowa, and in 1985, a visit by a Chinese delegation was an extraordinary event, Dvorchak noted, "It was on the front page of our hometown newspaper, and everyone had very vivid memories of Xi's visit."

The visit seemed to have also impressed Xi. Almost 27 years later, during a visit to the US as vice president, Xi had one personal request on his trip: A stop in Muscatine to visit his "old friends," including Dvorchak's parents.

"Life goes on and there were no ways to stay in touch as there was no internet back then. But so many people in Muscatine were very happy to learn of how President Xi has governed and China has become prosperous step by step," he said.

In 2013, Dvorchak worked for a company in Los Angeles that had an opening for a senior staffer in Beijing. Subsequently, Dvorchak moved to Beijing with his family. His childhood home was purchased by a Chinese businessman and transformed into the "Sino-US Friendship House," becoming the first memorial museum in the US dedicated to the theme of China-US friendship.

"But when the COVID-19 pandemic came, people weren't traveling, and the house gradually lost its original splendor," noted Dvorchak, who had been in negotiations with the previous owner of this house for about three years, in a bid to buy the house again. 

"We finally struck a deal at the beginning of this year and then closed the transaction. So my family now owns the house again," he said proudly.

The Global Times found that the house is now filled with news clippings of China and the Chinese leader. 

"We want school children, as one example, to come on a field trip; come through the house and learn about China and learn about what China is like now and all the great things that China has contributed to human civilization," he said.

More active efforts needed

Dvorchak has been living in China for a decade now.

"It's been absolutely wonderful to experience how that the country is fantastic. We've had such a warm welcome. So I can't say enough good things about China and the experience that we have had," Dvorchak said.

In recent days, Dvorchak and others from Iowa visited Kuliang in Fuzhou, Fujian Province and the Xiongan New Area and Zhengding county in Hebei. There, they marveled at the rapid changes in China, the unique path of modernization that China is firmly following, and were even more touched by the friendship between the people of China and the US.

"I would say the main thing I have gained is a lot of great friendships. In Kuliang we witnessed the warmth and the happiness of reunions between Chinese and American people," said Dvorchak. 

When a group of former Fuzhou residents crossed mountains and oceans to return to this beloved place, they were looking to rekindle the feelings they had when they first lived in China, he noted.

"And when we went to our sister province, Hebei, to see people we have seen many times before we have shared great experiences with. Such friendship is playing an active role in promoting peaceful exchanges and interaction between the two superpowers in the world today," he said. 

Dvorchak pointed out that old friends from Iowa are clearly aware that through President Xi's career, even when he was visiting Iowa in 1985, people-to-people exchanges have been a high priority for him.

Dvorchak said he regrets that many Americans base their opinions on what they hear on television, and from much media and political hype with negative information about China. "I always just tell people to turn off the TV, just look at your daily experience, look at the Chinese friend you have that is gonna make you realize that the negative view is not reflective of reality."

When Xi went to Muscatine in 1985, Dvorchak's parents gave him a parting gift of popcorn, and he left behind Chinese liquor in return. Currently, Dvorchak says he wishes to do more.

"I and the other people from Iowa have been involved [in China-US friendship] for a long time, and are working on the project of the new edition of the Sino-US Friendship House. We're all working on it together. It's just one little house in the middle of Iowa, but it's pushing back and it's saying, 'hey, let's bring positive energy to the US-China relationship,'" he said.

Although some mainstream US media and the US government maintain a "reserved" style of silence, Huawei's latest flagship mobile phone, Mate 60 Pro, continues to send shockwaves in the US public opinion field. Bloomberg commissioned a professional organization to disassemble the new phone, looking for clues about how far China's technology has gone. Some simply claimed that the development was a "slap in the face" to the US. We can feel that the shock shown by American public opinion is real. It boils down to two main questions: Has Huawei succeeded? Has America failed?

As a company, what mobile phones Huawei launches and what technologies it uses have nothing to do with the US and should not attract such attention. Disassembling devices is a routine practice for professionals in the technology industry to understand new products, and it is mostly a personal activity. However, it is abnormal for the US media to commission organizations to disassemble a mobile phone, making a big fuss about it.

Just imagine, if a China media "disassembled" an iPhone with a "search" mentality to analyze what new technologies it has developed with a magnifying glass, it would obviously be considered "senseless." And frankly speaking, Chinese society as a whole is happy to see technological advancement of American products. Almost no one would think that those advancements mean China's failure, and no one would feel that it is a "slap in the face." The actions of disassembling a phone ultimately reflect Washington's pathological psychology.

The reason why some American elites are surprised is that they generally believe that China cannot make high-end chips on its own. According to Kevin Klyman, a technology policy researcher at Harvard University, the US has done its best to undermine China's semiconductor industry by taking a really unprecedented step and launching a surgical strike on that industry. He also said that "It has been an extraordinary success beyond anyone's wildest dreams that the Netherlands and Japan have joined US export controls to the hilt."However, due to such crazy suppression, things suddenly appeared beyond "control" in the areas that the US considered most confident and critical. For some politicians in Washington with extremely distorted mentality toward China, this is enough to overwhelm them.

We advise some Americans to deconstruct and reconstruct their concept of China's technical development and innovation, in addition to disassembling smartphones. In recent years, not only Huawei but also many other Chinese enterprises have made substantial headway in areas where the US pushed to ban China, such as aerospace, photovoltaics and energy. China has achieved tremendous breakthroughs in these areas and has brought more technological dividends to the world. Thereby, we establish closer ties with the international community. It is reasonable to say that China's tendency toward high-level technological self-reliance and self-strengthening is irreversible. As many Chinese netizens have said: those who cannot kill us will eventually strengthen us.

Some US media have conducted "self-reflection" on Huawei's launch of a new phone series, saying that "Huawei chip shows US curbs are porous, not useless." This kind of thinking is like trying to forcefully build a dam in the middle of rushing waves, without considering whether the water can be stopped. In the end, they will find that they have spent a great deal of effort to build an island that traps themselves. Unfortunately, we have not seen Washington deeply reflect on why its restrictions and suppressions have failed and whether some policy measures were wrong, nor have we seen corresponding adjustments being made.

When a Chinese manufacturer releases a new gadget, people in the US will be busy disassembling it with political motives. When China signs a cooperation agreement with another country, the US quickly eavesdrops and goes to that country to "lobby." Sure, let Washington go through these troubles. This kind of self-torment will ultimately consume US' national strength, not China's. Facts have repeatedly proven that US suppression will only strengthen China's determination for independent innovation, self-reliance and opening-up to the outside world. China's progress cannot be stopped. 

It is exceedingly abnormal for one country to regard another country's technical advancement as a threat. In today's deeply globalized society, any technical advancement will eventually benefit all of humanity. The primary criterion for measuring its success is the number of people who will benefit from the technical rewards it brings. In this sense, if Washington continues to cling to a "small yard, high fence" mentality, it will only move further away from its expected "victory."

The "Super Golden Week," which combines the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holidays, officially begins, as rail transportation of the holiday started on Wednesday. Before this, the festive atmosphere of the two combined holidays had been fully "preheated" in all parts of the country. On social media and in daily life, the destination of the holidays has become a hot topic of discussion and even greeting words among acquaintances during these days. Anyone who is in Chinese society, or who has crossed paths with it, can easily feel the Chinese people's eagerness and anticipation of this long vacation have formed a heat.

This heat is intuitively reflected in the tourism data of this long vacation. Judging from the existing statistics or predictions, this year's "Super Golden Week" presents four obvious characteristics.

First, China's domestic tourism is seeing "full bloom." Cities that go viral online, such as Hangzhou and Changsha, are highly popular, while remote areas, including Xinjiang and Xizang (Tibet), have also attracted a large number of tourists. In addition, "dark horses" appeared among tier-three to -five cities, such as Zibo, East China's Shandong Province, and Yanbian, Northeast China's Jilin Province.

Second, outbound travel has grown strongly, as places like Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe and Central Asia have seen a surge of Chinese tourists and it is hard to even find accommodation in some of these destinations.

Third, the proportion of long-distance travel has increased significantly. Data show that 37 percent of travelers plan to travel for six to eight nights, an increase of 3 percentage points from pre-COVID 2019. This has also become an obvious change in China's holiday tourism over the past three years.

Fourth, the trend of integration of culture, sports and tourism is obvious. In addition to traditional tourism programs, concerts, music festivals and camping attract many young consumers, and rural tourism routes, including the "Village Super League" and "Village BA," are getting hot.

Various data show that the scale of passengers during this "Super Golden Week" is likely to break a new record. The scale of the huge crowds counted in billions of people at a given time is unimaginable in most countries, and it probably only occurs during China's Golden Week holidays and Spring Festival, with a distinctly Chinese characteristics. Although tourism does not account for a large proportion of China's consumption, it is a wind vane, an important symbol of the improvement of Chinese people's quality of life, a reflection of the society's strong desire to pursue a better life, and one of the most important sources of China's strong economic resilience.

The bustling scenes of the "Super Golden Week" will, to a certain extent, help boost confidence in the Chinese economy. This is crucial. Throughout this year, there has been a crescendo of voices from the US and the West that badmouth the Chinese economy, searching for and piecing together materials. The true situation of the "Super Golden Week" will render most of these pessimistic arguments illogical and factually unsupported, essentially debunking themselves. The Golden Week will demonstrate the vitality and potential of China's economy and consumer market. However, it's important to note that the vigor and potential of China's economy and consumer market are not proven only by the Golden Week.

It needs to be emphasized that the "Super Golden Week" is more than just about the economy. From holidays, such the National Day and the Spring Festival, we can see the most authentic way of life and philosophy of the Chinese people: They aspire to lead good lives, advocate goodwill toward others, and have no interest in interfering with others' lives or being confrontational. This forms solid public support for China's path of peaceful development. Everything China does is aimed at providing a better life for its people and development opportunities for people worldwide.

China, with its advantage of a vast market, still possesses significant influence over the external economic environment. Many neighboring countries are looking forward to this Golden Week to boost industries related to their local tourism. This is precisely a concrete manifestation of how China provides development opportunities for other countries.

The more valuable significance of observing the "Super Golden Week" lies in the fact that it demonstrates that China, in every aspect, is far from reaching the peak of its modernization process. People's expectations for consumption and their pursuit of a higher quality of life are far from being fully realized. Vacations represent a way of life that should never be exclusive to developed societies in the West; Chinese people have every right to live such lives as well. The stronger this pursuit becomes, the greater the internal impetus to China's economic development is.

During the upcoming holidays that are about reunion and gathering, most Chinese people can temporarily set aside their demanding work and fully enjoy the relaxation of the holidays. This in itself showcases and accumulates the momentum for Chinese society to move forward.

From space robots to greenhouse gas remote sensing, from placing fish on the space station's dinner table to mutagenesis of rose essential extraction… The first International Space Science and Scientific Payload Competition kicked off in Foshan, South China's Guangdong Province on Thursday, attracting youths from across the world to vie for a "ticket" to participate in the China Space Station and the International Space Station (ISS). 

Despite an ever complex world where tensions are rising among global players, space cooperation and people-to-people exchanges remain robust and vibrant, bringing a channel for connection that transcends differences and promotes the building of a shared future for mankind, students and experts from the US and Europe told the Global Times at the event. 

The competition is the first international aerospace competition in China aimed at gathering and nurturing outstanding global talents and projects in space science and payload technology. The winning projects will be recommended as candidates for flights to the China Space Station and the ISS, the Global Times learned on Thursday. 

The competition is jointly initiated by the Chinese Institute of Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology, the International Academy of Astronautics, Chinese Society of Astronautics, and China Space Foundation.

Themed "A Shared Space for a Better Future," it is committed to promoting significant scientific discoveries and innovative technological breakthroughs in the aerospace field, driving the civil use of aerospace technology and promoting a sharing mechanism for innovative achievements to benefit all humanity.

Olivier Contant, the French-American Executive Director of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), emphasized the academy's longstanding commitment to promoting peaceful collaboration among countries during an exclusive interview with the Global Times. "The IAA has been dedicated for over 60 years to enabling all nations to participate in space programs. Our mission is to foster global unity through research, conferences, technologies, and collaboration, all focused on the peaceful use of space. In the scientific world, you don't have these boundaries, politics."

"Competition always happens, but that's normal. Our focus remains on promoting peaceful collaboration for the benefit of mankind regardless what's happening. One way for the Academy to do it is by conducting more than 100 space studies with world class experts based on international consensus." he said.

The competition has attracted student groups from more than 30 countries including Spain, Italy, Egypt, Russia, Pakistan, Argentina and Mexico. There are 116 teams - 81 from China and 35 from abroad. Thirteen high school groups were invited to participate as well.  

úrsula Andrea Martinez álvarez and Gigor Dan-Cristian, PhD students in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Madrid, Spain, told the Global Times that their project, thermocapillary-based control of a free surface in microgravity, has been selected to enter the final round of the competition. 

"China's advance in space has been real fast, and it would be amazing to internationally cooperate among different countries and also use the Chinese space station as a platform to perform experiments from people worldwide," úrsula told the Global Times. 

Speaking of recent tensions between China and the US in space, she said that "historically as space advancement is such a difficult matter, it has always needed collaboration between nations, and history has demonstrated that we have been able to surpass the political tensions for the good of science. I believe that this is actually a channel to show that we can cooperate and understand each other."

Other projects from the college student teams include an intelligent snake-shaped space robot presented by the Beijing Institute of Technology. Equipped with flexible pillars, it is lightweight and compact, providing technical support for internal structural monitoring and surgical functions that involve human-robot collaboration.

A team from Islamabad, Pakistan presented research on the impact of high speed and high altitude on the positioning of the BDS GNSS receiver, while Samara National Research University from Russia presented a study on antibiotic resistance in intestinal bacteria in a space environment. 

High school students also impressed the audiences with a number of brilliant ideas. A team from Beijing presented the idea of space-induced mutagenesis breeding for roses to increase their oil production, as rose essential oil is one of the most expensive oils in the world.

The team from Foshan's Dali High School brought researches on the cultivation of multi-generation mudskippers in the space station. The experiment aims to study amphibious fish that can be cultivated in the space station for long periods. The fish is a tasty and nutritious dish to enrich astronauts' menus on their dinner table.

Li Shiyi, a freshman at Dali High School, told the Global Times that the project was inspired by the experiments taught by Shenzhou-13 taikonaut Wang Yaping while in orbit. 

"During the Tiangong classroom, Wang talked about experiments involving fish and rice cultivation, and we extended it to the mudskipper. We noticed that the food they ate was always from vacuum-sealed bags brought from the ground, which may not be very fresh. So I hope that by conducting this experiment, they can eventually enjoy a hot bowl of fresh fish soup in space one day," Li said. 

Li said that she wants to become a taikonaut like Wang after she grows up. "My wish is for China's space station to develop faster and better. I also hope to have more exchanges with countries like the US that have more advanced space technology. By doing so, we can use our mature and advanced technology to help countries that have relatively lagged behind in space development, making the world a better place."

At the opening ceremony of the finals, Zhang Feng, Chairman of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, said they will continue to utilize such conference platform to comprehensively showcase cutting-edge technologies in the field of life electronics, explore future visions, and promote extensive collaboration in the field of life electronics.

"Young talents are where the national innovation vitality and the hope for technological development lie. In the process of continuously creating new history in China's aerospace industry, a large number of young aerospace professionals have taken on major responsibilities, showcasing the spirit of Chinese youth in the new era with their radiance and vitality," Yu Miao, Director of the International Cooperation Center of China Aerospace, said while addressing the opening ceremony of the event.

Events in China involving US actor Will Smith's son Jaden Smith set for Friday to Sunday were delayed after the rapper was accused of making racist comments about China. Refunds for the events are currently being carried out.

A post on Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu has taken over Chinese social media. The post claims that a Chinese netizen was traveling on a high-speed train from Kyoto to Tokyo in Japan on August 19, and happened to be in the same cabin with Smith and his team. 

"Someone asked Jaden his opinion on different countries including China. Jaden replied with 'F*** China.' Smith repeatedly made derogatory remarks about China," the post wrote. 

The post on Xiaohongshu said that Smith and his team were drinking, laughing, banging the tray table and making these offensive comments very loudly. The train attendants and someone who appeared to be a passenger had to talk to the crowd several times to get them to lower their voices. The lot didn't seem to care despite other people's dissatisfaction.

The witness also posted photos and a video of Smith and his team on the train. "Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture their offensive comments in the video," the post read.  

While some fans posted pictures showing themselves unfollowing Smith on social media to express their disappointment and anger toward his alleged remarks, comments flooded his Instagram page, urging him to give a further explanation or apology. The rapper didn't respond, instead comments for his recent posts were turned off. An Instagram story announcing that his events in China would be rescheduled was also posted. 

"Rescheduled dates will be announced soon," he wrote.   

The rapper was originally scheduled to perform in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen on Friday to Sunday. On Wednesday the event organizer in China announced that refunds would be issued within five to seven business days.   

On Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo, the hashtag related to Jaden Smith has reached more than 466,000 views.

Some fans noted that there was no actual proof that the rapper made any racist comments and that the original post was just a one sided story. They called for the witness to provide more concrete proof.

Searching for the witness on Xiaohongshu on Sunday, the Global Times could not find the original user.  

Some argued that if he hadn't made up his story, he would have clarified the misunderstanding. 

This post was particularly shocking to Chinese netizens, given the Smith family's historically positive ties with China. Will Smith, Jaden's father, has maintained accounts on major Chinese social platforms and has also endorsed many Chinese products in the past. His popularity among Chinese audiences is evident. Notably, he and a young Jaden's performance in the movie The Pursuit of Happynes is much beloved by Chinese fans.

Jaden himself isn't a stranger to China either. As a child actor, he worked alongside Hong Kong action movie superstar Jackie Chan in the remake of The Karate Kid. As an adult and a musician, he's visited the country multiple times. 

The question on many minds is: Why would someone, who's repeatedly visited a country for work and seemingly built connections there, risk damaging those ties with derogatory comments? And who continues to provide such figures with platforms and opportunities despite repeated controversies?

There's a broader lesson here about the importance of cultural sensitivity, especially for global celebrities. A casual comment can quickly spiral into a major incident with far-reaching implications, said a commentator. 

In an age of instant information and constant connectivity, celebrities need to be more cautious than ever. And as audiences, perhaps we ought to think more critically about the figures we choose to support.

Scientists have built a bacterium that contains the minimal genetic ingredients needed for free living.

This bacterium’s entire set of genetic blueprints, its genome, consists of only 473 genes, including 149 whose precise biological function is unknown, researchers report in the March 25 Science.

The newly-created bacterium contains a minimalist version of the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides. Mycoplasma already have some of the smallest known genomes. M. mycoides used in the experiments started with 901 genes. In comparison, other bacteria, including E. coli, may have 4,000 to 5,000 genes. Humans have more than 22,000 genes, although not all are necessary (SN: 4/2/16, p. 18).
In 2010, researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, Calif., replicated the entire genome of M. mycoides and popped it into a cell of a different species, Mycoplasma capricolum, creating what some people called the first synthetic organism (SN: 6/19/10, p. 5). The new work strips the M. mycoides genome down to its essential elements before transplanting it to the M. capricolum shell, producing a minimal bacteria dubbed syn3.0.

Researchers hope syn3.0’s uncluttered genome will teach them more about the basics of biology. Such minimal genome bacteria also may be chassis on which to build custom-made microbes for producing drugs or chemicals.
J. Craig Venter, founder of the nonprofit institute, and a team of researchers there led by Clyde Hutchison III and Daniel Gibson initially set out to design an organism based on a core set of about 300 genes that researchers surmised a microbe would need to survive on its own. But when the researchers tried to bring their computer creations to life, “every one of our designs failed,” Venter said in teleconference with reporters. The failure was due to leaving genes of unknown function out of the mix. About 32 percent of the genetic ingredients ultimately needed to cook up even a simple organism were left out of the initial recipe because the researchers didn’t know what the genes did and didn’t understand their importance. Once those genes were mixed back into the batter, the bacteria sprung to life.

“I think we’re showing how complex life is in even the simplest of organisms,” Venter said. “These findings are very humbling” because they show that researchers still don’t fully understand even the minimal requirements for life.

That lack of knowledge is “frustrating after so many years of molecular biology,” says synthetic biologist Pamela Silver of Harvard Medical School. But the pared-down microbe may be a good platform for discovering what genes of unknown function do, she says.

Other researchers have attempted to make minimal genomes by stripping away one gene at a time. But the Venter group built their lean microbe from the ground up, synthesizing pieces of DNA that would later be stitched into a complete genome.

Drew Endy, a synthetic biologist at Stanford University, is among several scientists applauding the made-from-scratch approach. “Only when you try to build something do you find out what’s truly required. Too often in biology we end up with only data, a computer model, or a just-so story. When you actually try to build something, you can’t hide from your ignorance,” Endy said in an e-mail. “What you build either works or it doesn’t.”

At first, the bare-bones genome didn’t work. Some genes that appeared to be nonessential for life are really requirements, the researchers discovered. Those genes tended to have redundant functions with another gene. Researchers could remove one of those genes, but not both at the same time, just as knocking out one engine on a twin-engine jet will keep the plane airborne, but disabling both engines will lead to a crash, says Gibson.

Although syn3.0’s genome is far smaller than those of other free-living bacteria, it may not be the minimal genome for every independent organism in every situation. (Symbiotic bacteria living inside host cells may have fewer genes than syn3.0 does, but cannot survive on their own.) Other researchers have theorized that a minimal cell could consist of one single RNA-replicating gene inside a membrane, says geneticist George Church of Harvard University.

Starting with another organism or growing the bacteria under different conditions would probably lead to a microbe with a different minimal set of genes, says Jay Keasling, a synthetic biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “The minimal genome is in the eye of the beholder,” he says.

Gibson and Venter agree that they have created a minimal genome, but not necessarily the minimal genome. Syn3.0 is streamlined, but still contains a few frills. The team kept several “quasi-essential” genes that aren’t strictly necessary for life, but allow the bacteria to grow fast enough to make them useful in the lab.

The family of known dwarf planets orbiting the sun just got a new member. The tiny world, designated 2015 RR245, lives in the Kuiper belt, the icy debris field beyond Neptune that’s home to Pluto. RR245 is currently about 9.6 billion kilometers from the sun, or roughly 64 times as far as Earth, and it loops around the sun on an elongated orbit every 700 years or so.

Astronomers first noticed RR245 in February as a drifting speck of light in images taken last September at the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope in Hawaii. The planet’s size is hard to determine without knowing how reflective its surface is; it could be large and dark or tiny and bright. But if its surface is similar to other worlds in the Kuiper belt, then RR245 might be about 700 kilometers wide, just one-fifth the diameter of the moon.

Like botanical vampires, dodder plants (Cuscuta sp.) suck the life out of crops around the world. But tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) are mysteriously immune to the parasitic vine’s attacks.

To figure out how they do it, a research team from England and Germany hit tomatoes and three other plant species with C. reflexa extract in the lab. Tomatoes totally overreacted, producing stress hormones to protect themselves from the parasite, while the other plants failed to mount a defense.

This suggests that tomatoes treat the dodder like a virus, taking cues from parasite proteins as a warning system, the team writes July 28 in Science. This sensitivity traces to a receptor that senses the presence of a small protein released by dodder plants.

This probably isn’t the only defense option. Some wild tomato species can fend off dodder even though they’re missing the gene behind the receptor, the researchers note. Still, the findings could prove useful in protecting other crops from vampiric vines through genetic engineering.

If you’d like to vacation at the newly found planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, you might want to reconsider. It’s nearby astronomically — a mere 4.2 light-years away — but still too far away for any plausible transportation technology to reach within the current millennium.

In fact, it’s a pretty safe bet the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series before any human steps foot on Earth’s nearest exoplanetary neighbor (known as Proxima b). Unless P. Centaurian aliens arrive soon with a “To Serve Man” cookbook, your chances of visiting Proxima b before you die are about the same as sainthood for Ted Bundy. By the time anybody from here goes there, years will have five digits.

It took NASA’s New Horizons probe — the fastest spacecraft humans have ever launched — over nine years just to get to Pluto. At its top speed of 16 kilometers per second, New Horizons would need almost 80,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri.

Solar sail propulsion — in which lightweight craft could be accelerated by pressure from sunlight — would be a little be faster, but not by much, taking (by one estimate) 66,000 years to make the Proxima Centauri run.

Novel propulsion schemes have been proposed that could reduce that time substantially. A sail driven by alpha particle recoil, for instance, provides some serious advantages over solar sails, as Wenwu Zhang and colleagues point out in the August issue of Applied Radiation and Isotopes.

Ordinary rocket speed is limited by how fast the combusted fuel can eject exhaust; NASA has investigated a plasma engine design that can attain exhaust speeds of 50 km/s. But that approach requires huge energy input and high voltage, Zhang and colleagues point out (and so would be prohibitively expensive). Alpha particles emitted by radioactive substances, on the other hand, can speed away about 300 times faster. Therefore, Zhang and coauthors assert, “alpha decay particles … may be a potential solution for long-time acceleration in space.”

Usually, of course, a chunk of radioactive matter would emit alpha particles in all directions. So your craft would need a shield on one side to absorb the particles before they got very far. The rest would stream away in the opposite direction, pushing the craft forward (by virtue of the law of conservation of momentum). True, alpha particles are tiny and the effect of their recoil would be small. But it would add up. Shot into space with standard technology (thereby achieving a 16 km/s start-up speed), an alpha recoil spacecraft could eventually reach a speed in the range of 200–300 km/s or so.
It helps to choose the right alpha-emitting material. Uranium-232 would be ideal. It has a long enough half-life (almost 70 years) to last for an extended voyage, but it also decays into daughter nuclei that emit alpha particles more frequently, boosting the recoil effect. (You won’t find any U-232 in uranium mines, though — it would need to be produced in nuclear transmutation factories.)

Assuming a suitably light and thin absorption material, Zhang and colleagues envision an alpha-powered interstellar sail about 24 meters across. They calculate a travel time to Proxima Centauri between about 4,000 and 9,000 years (depending on the ratio of fuel mass to total spacecraft mass). That would easily win the race against a solar sail, but would far exceed most people’s available vacation time. “Interstellar travel definitely asks for even better propulsion technologies,” Zhang and colleagues understate. And surely within 4,000 years somebody will invent a faster technology that could pass the alpha-decay craft and get to Proxima b first.

Other people already have ideas, as Science News astronomy writer Christopher Crockett noted in his story on the discovery of Proxima b. Philanthropist Yuri Milner recently announced a research project to explore the prospects of sending numerous nanocraft to Proxima Centauri’s neighborhood — the Alpha Centauri triple star system. (Proxima is the third star, presumably in orbit around Alpha Centauri A and B.) That plan envisions wafers weighing about a gram or so carried along by similar-mass light sails propelled by a powerful laser beam. If current technological dreams come true, tiny cameras and lasers on the wafer could capture and transmit information about Proxima b back to Earth.

Supposedly such nanocraft could reach 20 percent of the speed of light, allowing them to reach Proxima Centauri by maybe 20 years after launch. So there’s an outside chance of getting a message back from Proxima b before the Cubs win a World Series. But there’s no hope of hitching a ride on such a wafer, unless, perhaps, you’re a tardigrade.

Even if some futuristic technology permitted building a real ship, say the size of the space shuttle, that could fly 20 percent of the speed of light, it might not be a good idea. Such a ship could, in the wrong hands, become the most devastating weapon ever imagined. Flying 20 percent of light speed, a space shuttle would possess a kinetic energy roughly the equivalent of 1,000 hydrogen bombs (or millions of Hiroshima-sized bombs). Of course, it would be an expensive ship and probably nobody would want to crash it. Unless the people who took it to Proxima Centauri got really mad at the people back on Earth.