system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: We can manipulate an organism's DNA to emphasize several traits. What would it take to make a DNA from scratch, creating an entirely new organism?
gpt
For some definitions of "scratch", we have already done this.

We can build bacteria DNA from scratch, insert it into an existing bacterium, and have it use that DNA instead, building new bacterium as it divides.

That synthetic DNA is mostly just a copy of the original bacteria DNA, but they did intentionally make changes.

The real challenge is making truly novel DNA.  We understand the letters and a few words, but we are still far enough away from understanding its language to do more than copy it.