Mycoplasma laboratorium is a designed, partially synthetic species of bacterium derived from the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium. This effort in synthetic biology is being undertaken at the J. Craig Venter Institute by a team of approximately 20 scientists headed by Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith and including DNA researcher Craig Venter and microbiologist Clyde A. Hutchison III.  Mycoplasma genitalium was chosen as it was the species with the smallest number of genes known at that time.