www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/07/a-journey-to-the-center-of-our-cells A Journey to the Center of Our Cells (2022) by James Somers comments on M. genitalium in general, and in particular on the JCVI strains.
essential metabolism for a minimal cell (2019) mentions:
JCVI-syn3A, a robust minimal cell with a 543 kbp genome and 493 genes, provides a versatile platform to study the basics of life.
Based on JCVI-syn3.0, they've added a few genes back to give better phenotypes, including slightly faster duplication time. Because the development cycle time is your God is also true in biology.
As of essential metabolism for a minimal cell (2019) it had only 91 genes of unknown function! So funny.
Bibliograpy:
Figure 1. JCVI-syn3A during cell division by David Goodsell (2022) Source. A description is present at: cdn.rcsb.org/pdb101/goodsell/2022_JCVI-syn3A.pdf Integrative Illustration of a JCVI-syn3A Minimal Cell by David Goodsell (2022) which describes everything in the picture.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.19.508583v1.full
CVI-syn3B strains differ from JCVI-syn3.0 by the presence of 19 additional non-essential genes that result in a more easily manipulated cell. JCVI-syn3B additionally includes a dual loxP landing pad that enables easy Cre recombinase mediated insertion of genes
It is also interesting to see how they are interested in co-culture with HeLa cells, presumably to enable infectious bacterial disease studies.
At biology.indiana.edu/news-events/news/2023/lennon-minimal-cells.html (2023) they let it re-evove to it it would regain some fitness, and it did.