The researchers, led by a team from Macquarie University in Australia, chose yeast as a way to demonstrate the potential for producing foodstuffs that could survive the rigors of a changing climate or widespread disease.

It's the first time a synthetic eukaryotic genome has been constructed in full, following on from successes with simpler bacteria organisms. It's a proof-of-concept for how more complex organisms, like food crops, could be synthesized by scientists.

Scientists manipulated SynXVI to get yeast growing at elevated temperatures. (Goold et al., Nature Communications, 2025)