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Build Your Own Virus

Posted by michael on from the just-like-sea-monkeys dept.

Wire Tap writes "Scientists have assembled the first synthetic virus. The US researchers built the infectious agent from scratch using the genome sequence for polio. The most amusing part is this snippit: 'To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier.' Heck, don't we all have our own mail-order suppliers for gene sequences?"

2 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. live virus by Veteran · · Score: 1, Troll

    The definition of stupidity is doing something just because you can, and for no other reason.

    Evidently these people don't understand the difference between 'could' and 'should'.

    Since these ethical idiots have now demonstrated that building an artificial virus is possible it is only a matter of time before someone (since the gnome is available) rebuilds a small pox virus and lets that loose on the world.

  2. Now all we need... by DarkHelmet · · Score: 1, Troll
    ...is a "virus" that straightens teeth, removes the drawl from people's voices, and causes family trees to start having forks. Either that, or kills off people with those qualities.

    Gawd, I hate talking about suicide.

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i