That sounds something like CRISPR or gene modification of an existing organism genome, maybe even taking genes from one species and inserting them into another (taking bioluminescent jelly fish and putting certain genes into cats or plants to make them glow). But, I'm talking about more recent successes of actually reproducing the DNA (synthetic DNA) from the atomic level up not modifying existing "natural DNA".
Sorry, I don't have enough time to search for recent studies, but here is old article about first "synthetic DNA" we created and inserted into cells that took off and self-replicated back in 2008: https://www.wired.com/2010/05/scientists-create-first-self-r...
The link seems to reference the first success of fully synthetic DNA, but I have recently been listening to podcasts about more recent experiemnts/studies, specifically reproducing bacteria with full synthetic DNA (which is stripped down as much as possible to maintain viability) for the purpose of studying gene expression and hopefully begin to identify what the currently unknown genes sequences do.
I don't think so. I think they just took a small existing bacteria and by pruning its genome came to something which was minimally viable.