Stanford University scientists reported on Thursday they had made the first full computer model of an organism, another breakthrough in a field that’s both raising hopes of fighting disease and stoking fears of biological engineering.

The team, led by Markus W. Covert, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford, made the model using Mycoplasma genitalium, a standard target for such work because of its status as the world’s smallest free-living bacterium.

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