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Scientists Attempting to Create Simple Life Form
derubergeek writes "The Washington Post is reporting on an apparently credible project to create a simple life form in a petri dish. The goal is two-fold: 1) to actually create a unique life form essentially from scratch and (more importantly) 2) to extensively analyze and model the entire biology of this critter. Exciting and scary at the same time. From the article, it sounds as if they are quite wary of their project and fascinated at the same time. I usually refer to that sensation as 'That little voice that I should have listened to...'" There's also a NY Times article.
This has already been done.
To ensure safety, Smith and Venter said the cell will be deliberately hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people; it also will be strictly confined, and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.
hmmm...where have I heard this before? Something to do with female dinosaurs and frog DNA.
As they say that they're going to do it in a "petri dish" I assume that we will not see Frankenstein, but rather Flubber.
I though that this has been done part-way in simulations of earths early atmosphere using electic discharges. At least they made aminoacids that way (I think they did that).
But the non-infectous-to-humans single cell organism may escape it's environment, and then immediatly die!!!!!!
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
They are gonna create a Slashdot Moderator From Scratch.
They are called Sea Monkeys!
...of a 'simple lifeform'. It lives in the white house...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
When attempts to create life in a petridish are successful, scientists might actually try to create life in a woman.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
The project will begin with M. genitalium, a minuscule organism that lives in the genital tracts of people and may cause or contribute to some cases of urethritis, an inflammation of the urethra. The scientists will remove all genetic material from the organism, then synthesize an artificial string of genetic material, resembling a naturally occurring chromosome, that they hope will contain the minimum number of M. genitalium genes needed to sustain life. The artificial chromosome will be inserted into the hollowed-out cell, which will then be tested for its ability to survive and reproduce.
They're taking an already extant organism, "hollowing it out" as it were, and seeing if it can live and reproduce normally with a series of increasingly customized (and minimal) genetic material. Not creating something from nothing.
I remember hearing something about this way back in the 80s or something. Supposedly a bunch of high mucky-mucks in the 50s created some simple lifeform but it quickly died because it couldn't "eat". Perhaps it's one of those urban legends, like the Easter Bunny and hairy palms.
Spread the RC luvin'
If they had to choose a bacteria to do unpredictable and possible dangerous experimentation with, why did they choose one that is known to cause crotch-burn in humans?!
When I read the headline this morning I thought it was going to be entirely from scratch, but the article says that they're "just" (like it's not still amazing we can do this) going to take an existing organism, and strip it of most of its DNA until they get down to the bare minimum required to sustain life. So I don't know if I'd necessarily call it "creating" life, because it seems to be more of the same modifying existing life people have been doing for a while now.
If it/he/she survives, they should give it/him/her a name.
I vote for the name "spam"
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
This is interesting research, but we have to be wary. The Frankenstein effect (as postulated by Bains et al.) could cause the researchers to overestimate their ability to control their creation, leading to the extinction of humanity.
While I approve of research for the sake of research, we need clear guidelines, and harsh penalties to prevent anything untoward from happening. Otherwise, before we know it, we'll have half-human beast wandering around the country.
When you already have George Bush ?
So what if this thing goes tragically bad?!? Did anybody see that episode of the Twilight Zone? Oh nevermind.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
Can you get bolts small enough to go through the neck of a blob in a petri dish? Phil, just me
"Cattle Prods solve most of life's little problems."
What will "Hello World" in DNA look like?
Really, creating life can't be *that* simple.
... well, I'll stop there.
It will be interesting to see what sort of things religious enthusiasts will say about this. I mean, this would go against the idea of life created by "god", "allah", "buddah", etc., wouldn't it?! It may even disprove
In the past scientists have been able to create rudimentary forms of life when subjected to the environment they would have been in "when life started". Amino acids combined with great heat and electricity were able to form living structures. Nothing that advanced though, I doubt they were able to reproduce or evolve in any way.
Good way to fuck up some clay.
God has the patent!
will it now mean "life from scratch".
Is put a tooth in a petri dish with coke in it and zap it with electricity.
...We've got other problems to look at first: cancer, AIDS, pollution, et al. Could we ever have too many scientists looking at these problems? Do we really need scientists wasting away captial on something as reckless as this?
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Any drunken trailer trash can produce a SIMPLE life form...
....the scientists reckon that these critters can develop their OWN infectious responses. So, they're building in a failsafe....
4-minute lifespan.
The scientists are making a base bactery, just the bare minimums of life. According to the article, when they get it dividing in the Petri dish, they'll start adding genes to have it produce particular proteins, like, say, insulin ?
My guess is that it'd be easily modifiable to suit medical or industrial needs. This particular sentence reminds me of that /. article on the electronic stomach : If Venter and his collaborators manage to create a minimalist organism of the sort they envision, they will attempt to add new functions to it one at a time -- conferring on it the ability, for instance, to break down the carbon dioxide from power plant emissions or to produce hydrogen for fuel.
Frankenstein was a story. It was fiction. And so was Jurassic Park, and so was Gattaca. I won't comment on the Bible here, although my view of that book is probably pretty clear from the context
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Google search:c eid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0
h tml
http://www.google.com/search?q=M.+genitalium&sour
Best link in search:
http://www.tigr.org/tdb/CMR/gmg/htmls/Background.
The jist of it is, it's a simple prokaryotic creature that has been fully sequenced. The full genetic sequence is about 0.54MB of data.
I wonder that they can make me a super-model girlfriend that likes /.
Considering that they're using some bacteria that causes burning/itching in the crotch, I suppose that creating this new life from 'scratch' was more of a play on words?
:)
Who knew they had advanced so far in subtle humor?
No, you're the only one to whom it seems incredibly foolish. Well, okay, you and a bunch of other fools.
As I said in another post, no one raises these objections with physics, or chemistry, or math, despite things like, oh, say, the atomic bomb. All scientific research is potentially dangerous. But stopping research because of some vague fear, or some pseudo-philosophical-religious claptrap like "some things are better off left alone" (what things exactly? Be specific) would leave us in the Dark Ages.
Jellyfish don't do scientific research. No jellyfish has ever built an atomic bomb, or engineered a dangerous virus, true. But would you rather be a jellyfish, or a human being?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The New England Journal of Evil
... this highly unusual way to create life. However, although this method avoids crotch-burn, it has so far been unsuccessful at creating life.
Call me crazy, but I see a parallel here with this. - Taking an existing, known format and minimising it as far as possible. Heck - even the number returned by the code is relevant.
Insert witty sig about inserting witty sig here, here.
here
I couldn't agree more. We are meddling with forces we do not comprehend, and for that matter we are attempting to control mis-understood biological mechanisms in the process.
While there are many potential benefits if we can accomplish this kind of genetic engineering, it's not clear that we are entirely ready for this. One must also ponder the potential for limited success, what will we do if some hideous Frankenstein creature results from this? If this creature goes awry will we be able to "kill" --- Is this moral / ethical?
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
The Washington Post is reporting on an apparently credible project to create a simple life form in a petri dish.
They should try a fridge instead. Last week i looked in there and i swear something jumped at me!
Star Thistle is commonly found in California fields only it's not native and it wasn't put there on purpose. It has displaced the local grasses almost completely in some areas. This is only one of thousands of examples of non-native species that have infested new (to them) environments.
All environments will be new to this critter. That makes the "scary" part, to me anyway, the fact that if this were to escape and survive it would displace something else with absolutely unknown consequences. We are completely dependant on our environment's biology for breathable air and edible food so it's pretty damn important that we don't accidentally (no one would even _consider_ doing it purposely, would they?) introduce some species that will screw it up.
I'm not saying we shouldn't experiment. I'm just saying that everyone should have a healthy dose of fear over this particular kind of experiment.
TW
I've had asked this question before but never received a good answer.
If man creates a new life form by definition man is the "Creator" of that life form. If somehow in a distance future man builds on this knowledge and creates an intelligent life form, from scratch, would man be it's "Creator"? If so, could one say that man is it's God?
This was touched upon in the Deep Space 9 trek series. The Dominan (sp?) created two life forms and the life forms acknowledged their "Creators" as their God.
Who knows?
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
The minimum number of genes required for an organism to survive has been a topic of interest for several years. An excellent semi-technical overview of this effort was produced by The National Academy of Sciences...
Well, if I had this kind of power, I'd make a lifeform with these characteristics:
1. Able to complete all my homework for me.
2. Will take on a female humanoid form and provide sexual gratification upon request.
3. Will do all annoying chores around the house such as cleaning the bathroom, taking out the garbage and washing the dishes.
Basically, I'd create the perfect woman. Hmmm, I better throw "Will not ask you if they're fat" in that list...
Was not Venter famous for disregarding the agreed to ethical plan for the human genome map at Celera? As I recall, Celera's plan was to map the human genome of an anonymous sample of cells from a variety of races and genders, such that the genome map produced would be a map of humanity-a great step for science. Venter replaced the anonymous cells with his own and declared that the human genome map Celera made was actually a map of himself.
Life will find a way.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
Start from the real beginning and try to create the basic building blocks with silicon instead of carbon. That would be a real accomplishment. (No, not silicone. Those life forms are already all over Hollywood.)
This experiment is very exciting for many reasons, but the modeling aspects alone make it worth while. Just following the up and down regulation of thousands of genes is an overwhelming burden. Modeling/visualizing the entire cell network with the normal complement of entities would be fantastically difficult. Simplification through gene reduction is a fundamentally important first step.
Hmmm... a lot of trees will die if Boehringer Mannheim tries to print this one out (a la biochemical pathways).
First entomology, then virology, and finally bioinformatics systems. Bugs follow me wherever I go.
But would you rather be a jellyfish, or a human being?
Human. Those poisonous sea anemones are a bitch. And rocks suck as pillows.
One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.
The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest." To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"
But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."
The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Back in the '70s, GM stripped the engine from and Oldsmobile so that they were left with an empty engine compartment. Then, in that same lab that resembled nothing like a petri dish, they inserted a Chevy engine. POOF! They had just created a new car from scratch!
"How do you expect me to see the forest with all these damn trees in the way?!"
If you want to make a car you need to define "what is a car", so far so good ... If you want to make "life" they will first need to define what exactly the criteria are before we can call one of their siblings "life".
Is it life because it moves,breathes, contains other cells, eats, sleeps, breeds, farths, burps ??
At which point exactly do we call an life ?
It does'nt matter if it's man made, it's still evolution.
Are you against evolution?
Weren't the dino's in Jurrasic Park supposed to die if they didn't get an essential amino acid (lysine?). Look what happened there. Next thing you know Dr. Malcom will be running around telling us 'I told you so'.
Their technique is equivalent of what many programmers do with someone's code when they want to see if it could be used for their own purpose. They will try removing code from the source of the program function by function and see if it still compiles and runs and what kinds of exceptions they get. So these guys are l33t h4x0r5!
You can't handle the truth.
'nuff said. don't you hate the lameness filter and the formkeys? sheesh.
With all we now understand about biology, and with the incredible advances working with "stuff" on the molecular scale, how long until we are really building single-celled organisms from scratch?
What they are doing here looks like its not totally from scratch. They are taking an already existing shell and then putting some other stuff in there and seeing if it comes to life.
This is very cool, but really a stepping stone to "life from scratch". How long? 5 years, 10?
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
RedHat goes further! They are developing a 64-bit apache together with Covalent!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
You should change your name to "Max".
This is the same as the premise of the science fiction book by Greg Bear Blood Music .
In which a researcher inadvertently creates sentient cells. But more importantly, the book describes a near future in which biological research outpaces computer research and that it spawns an entire "Gene Valley" type area as opposed to a "Silicon Valley". With organisms being manufactured to do just what the article describes -- Create hydrogen, purify air etc. Except the researcher decides to inject himself with his cells to "save them" and standard Sci-Fi goodness ensues.
God is Open Source.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
No, not Linux from Scratch, Life from Scratch (not), and ultimately the basis of another bio-weapon. Just what the planet really needs.
The hypothesis that "chemistry explains all of life" is nearly universal in science, yet is not fully proven yet (though I believe it). The ultimate test of the chemistry hypothesis is be to construct life from inert chemicals off the shelf. The closest one got was the constuction of a polio virus from regeants earlier this year. The virus appeared viable, but was about a thousand times less potent than its natural version. The simplest life form, as described in this article, is about 20-50 times more complicated than a virus in terms of genes and chemicals (proteins, sugars, others).
The alternative hypothesis is "neo-vitalism" or that is some mysterious substance or force outside of pure chemistry. This was the prevailing hypothesis until well into the 19th century. But it keeps on reappearing in more "scientific" forms today. One statement is the "only living material can produce living matter", even though you can fully explain all the chemistry, physics, and genetics. Another version callled "morphogensis" is that there are "patterns" in lving matter that are transmitted from ancestor to descendent. Yet another version, championed by physicist Roger Penrose is that there is secret unknown physics involved (clarification: he specificiation is attributing human consciousness to a new form of quantum interaction). Still another variation is "holism" or "emergism" which states the totally is greater than the sum of the parts, i.e. a reductionistic explanation is necessarily incomplete.
Note the relation of life to matter is a very old philosophical problem. The ancient Greek story of Pygmalian, the medival Golem, and the 186 year old Frankenstein novel all addressed this issue.
An auxilary problem is artificial intelligence. Its seem obvious that this can be done by us computer geeks. But 55 years of effort have had disappointing results. Some people use similar arguments against artificial life against artificial intelligence.
you've created lutherans!
Like the fungus that causes jock itch, this probably thrives in humid, sweaty conditions. I'm sure all that macho gay lockeroom sex doesn't help matters, either.
At some point we should be able to use XML to describe properties of an organism we want to create. The XML will be validated so that our organism will be correct to some minimal set of parameters. Later we will be able to print our new organism with some sort of an organic cell printer. A machine that will print organisms ala Fifth Element, only our machines will be smaller and will only print simple cells in the beginning. The Fifth Element's printer will be used by big corporations to create PHBs and BAs in the beginning but may be powerfull enough with time to actually print slave programmers, administrators and good quality assurance people.
That's what is really behind this project, not some waste management as they want you to believe.
You can't handle the truth.
When the military wants a project but doesn't want to look like they want it, the Energy Department is the place from which the government funnels the cash.
They even state in the article that there is biological warfare potential here. Of course there's also medicinal value - imagine an anti-virus virus that infects you and delivers an innoculation against a real disease. But before we get all lovey with this tech lets remember the lessons we learned from "Jurassic Park" - things will go wrong.
(Hey if you want a less pop-culture reference, look at the Manhattan project. Did you know that when they did the first test of a nuclear bomb they thought there was a small chance that the thing would start a chain reaction in the earth's atmosphere, burning the whole planet and killing all life? But they did it anyway. Good thing that didn't go wrong, but they also didn't know about how nasty radiation is and the long term affects it has - and i'm not talking about super-powered mutants here!)
Done rambling now.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
If you read the Washington Post article, you would find that this work is being sponsored the the DOE. They are interested in making GE bugs that could eat CO2, while producing Hydrogen in the process. That would be applicable to solving both our pollution and energy problems.
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise."
Psalm 111:10
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools [1] despise wisdom and discipline."
Proverbs 1:7
One thing that small organisms do very well is to swap genes. So what if it escapes, borrows some missing/interesting genes from a passing E. Coli ?
GM crops have been found to swap genes with plants that they weren't supposed to.
Which came first? The simplest form of life or the Interplanetary Genetic Scientist who decided to mod an organism at the celluar level.
****--- A fortune cookie once told me the meaning of life...so I ate it. ---****
... and creates an intelligent life form, from scratch, would man be it's "Creator"? If so, could one say that man is it's God?
Contradiction: If they are intelligent enough, they will not believe in the surpernatural.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
From the article:
...every any project latching itself unto this Third Reich wünderclone speedboat and heelhauling itself into existence and the public faith.
"More worrisome than the risk of escape, they acknowledged, is that the project could lay the scientific groundwork for a new generation of biological weapons, a risk that may force them to be selective about publishing technical details. But they said the project could also help advance the nation's ability to detect and counter existing biological weapons."
It used to be that you'd have to have a clear goal and some ethics to get funding and public good will. I guess all you need these days is to mention that it'll help protect the motherla, er, I mean assist Homeland Security.
Maybe I can get a grant to play America's Army: Operations.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all sqeamish about this project, I think it's great. I'm just wary of every science project
My
Limekiller
No need, I've found one sitting at the dest opposite me. .... oh it's a mirror.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Finally, geeks are able to stay in their labs and get a life - at the same time!
(Sorry, the other jokes I could think of were 'can you build a Beowulf cluster of these' and 'does it run Linux?')
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
I'd rather be a bird so I can poop on peoples' heads...
Seems to me that if they really wanna make life from scratch, they should start from scratch. are they doing that? No. They're taking pre-existing elements and sticking them together in a dish. That's not creation, it's manipulation. Reminds me of the joke of God and the biologist who had a bet to see who was greater. The biologist says to God "Look at all the great things man has created! We can even create man." So they go at it. God breathes real deep, says a few words, and a man rises up! The biologist takes some dirt and throws in some electricity and up rises a man. God looks at the biologist and says...Ah ah ah! You gotta create him from scratch. Of course all the biologist can do is "scratch" his head, because as we all know, creating life from scratch violates one of the Laws of Thermodynamics...
when they invented the Liberal (OMG - dont kill me!)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
$3M / (25*3) = $40K a year. That's not even taking office expenses, equipment & simply running the project into account.
Remind me to never do anything scientific.
Don't you know that earth will be shrunk into the size of a pea if we ever determine the mass of the Higgs Boson particle????
n et.html
Here is an explanation from the LEXX archives;-)
http://home1.gte.net/res04m7h/lilpla
The danger of creating a self-replicating organism is commonly called
the "gray goo problem". The organism reproduces exponentially,
has no natural enemies and consumes all available resources.
This problem is taken seriously, as shown by this paper,
although the scare-mongering is usually applied to
self-reproducing nano-technology.
I don't think there are "some things better off left alone." I do think I have provided an example of a scientific experiment with a valid ethical question. I also think we should have some idea of the ramifications of our actions before we proceed on any endeavor, and I think it's reasonable to ask that these scientists think long and hard before moving forward. Not because we as humans don't have a right to do such a thing, but because they are dealing with complex systems, and their safeguards may fail in unexpected ways. While I would never say, "We don't have the right to know this," it may be prudent to say, "We're not ready to do this yet."
Brevity is the soul of wit
-- Polonius
And i see "Scientists Attempting to Create Simple Life Form, so of course, the first thing that pops in to my mind is
"Oh my god they are trying to clone George W Bush!"
I've heard of this man, he was a doctor. Went by Dr. Frankenstein. He did something similar to this as well. You know, created a being. He considered it his child, while everyone around him called it a 'Monster'
I'm sure we'll have religious types, who will refer to this as the same, but are they really wrong?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Respect for something that is decidedly dangerous because of clear evidence is healthy. Fear is not.
Oh no! They're decompiling, editing and recompiling DNA! They're infringing on nature's intellectual property rights! Congress better make a new law ASAP to protect nature's profits from these "pirates"!
Do your part as an upstanding citizen and call your representatives now!
Actually I beg to differ. There was a time when people found out that adding organic lead compounds into gasoline improved octane ratings, so gasoline companies did this. Later, other people pointed out that lead is poisonous, and worked to get the lead out of the gasoline (much to the chagrin of the oil companies, who wanted to keep putting it in gasoline).
So these days we drive cars that burn lead-free gasoline. That was a moral, ethical, and health issue which squarely belongs in the realm of chemistry. I'm sure with a little work, people can find others (e.g. DDT, lead paints, etc).
Get your own space, your own moonlight, your own particle-wave guides...
If nothing else, God is our bootloader.
But would you rather be a jellyfish, or a human being?
Or would you like to swing on a star?
"Information wants to be paid"
Fiddling around with the genes of extent organisms; and
Using extent organisms for our own purposes, especially when it destabilizes an ecology; and
About a bazillion other things that we humans do on a daily basis. People's fearful reactions to anything involving genetic engineering or anything that violates the supposed sanctity on the creation of life (which is as common as dirt, literally) is mostly an irrational reaction based upon an inappropriate generalization. These sorts of things are no more inherently, and thus implicitly, ethically dubious or dangerous than is technology in general. Some activities are ethically dubious and dangerous; and people that are honestly concerned about these issues should understand that a net that is vastly oversized is useless because it catches too much. Focus on what is clearly dangerous and ethically dubious and scrutinize, regulate, or prevent those particular things.
In this case, trying to build an organism from what is relatively first principals will be the first step in beginning to really understand life; and, more to the point, will probably enable an increase in our comprehension of what truly is and isn't dangerous by increasing our fundamental understanding.
Your comment is a particularly stupid one that not only shows a lack of knowledge on the field of science, but of the personalities of human beings. There is no overlord scientific authority that directs what each and every scientist in the world should be working on. Science is very much an individual pursuit. You learn about what you are interested in or what you accidentally discover. A good scientist is a highly motivated scientist, not one forced to work on a project he/she has very little interest in.
We have plenty of scientists working on both AIDS and Cancer. If we were to stop all other pursuits until all disease were eradicated our overall standard of living would be much lower due to a lack of innovation in every other field. I suppose just because there's still rabies in the world you think that no scientist should be working on fuel cells, or just because a cure for lupus has been found no one should care a rats ass about developing more efficent supply chain methods...etc.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist... but we have a situation where a well-known scientist is going to take a common organism and complete research that he already started a while back.
Ummm... are you telling me that *nobody* in the military -- this country or some other -- has thought of this before?
I'd guess that there's a report on modified Mycoplasma genitalium somewhere in the bowels (bad pun) of some defense department vault.
So, which conspiracy theory is it?
* No conspiracy, he just happened to get $3 million from the government on good looks and charm.
* The military couldn't manage to do it, so there's no harm in letting this guy fail as well.
* The military couldn't manage to do it, so they're going to "open source" the development of artificially created organisms.
* The military *did* manage to do it, so they need this guy to recreate the results so they can blame him when the New Plague appears in the wild.
Excuse me, there's someone knocking on the door... wow, nice suit. Uh oh.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Not really. There is a bit more to this whole God thing than merely the creation of life, the universe, and everything.
And the situation does not really compare. God is uniquely positioned at the top of the chain of all the creators (look, that is His own Word, who am I to question?). The scientist is just a man in the middle, and once his creation evolves a couple of million years it will no doubt notice and make up its own mind about what (if anything) to worship.
From what I have read so far (caveat: none of what I have read has yet been in the scientific literature) what they are doing is taking a whole cell that already exists, removing the native DNA, and replacing it with synthetic DNA to see if they can control the cellular processes with their inserted DNA instructions. This is equivalent to taking a PC and wiping the hard disk of Windows, replacing it with Linux, and seeing how the Linux programs drive the video, memory, speakers, etc. They are not building a PC from scratch.
Replacing the DNA is the easy part. The hard part or creating "life" will be building a cell wall and getting all the receptors and ion channels and all the other embedded transmembrane proteins to work, making sure that the translational mechanisms are there to make proteins from the DNA, etc. The cell is a complex factory.
Probably what will really - to me - qualify as made life will come from using what is known about constructing small vesicles from phospholipids or perhaps synthetic equivalents. A small sphere of a lipid bilayer with one embedded synthetic protein, a short hunk of DNA that codes for that protein, and appropriate RNA to translate the instructions is the minimum requirement. But even then you have to worry about: getting the amino acids through the cell membrane, sequestering them at the assembly area, getting energy to drive the process into the vesicle, and on and on. The simplest cell imaginable is still going to be a huge project - manyfold times more complex than this experiment.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
People also thought Kudzu was a good idea. Now it's devouring the entire southeastern United States.
"Follow your Bliss." -- Joseph Campbell
But the only way to learn is to meddle with things we don't yet comprehend!
Did anyone else catch this obvious question? Do scientists have the right create life? Well, can they have childern without people fretting over some frankenstien killer virus child springing fully evil out of their groins? I don't believe anyone is challenging their ability to procreate, which by definition is creating life, so I don't see why are we asking these kind of idiodic questions. We should be far more concerned with why we let non-scientists procreate! Creating a rogue human is far more dangerous than creating a rogue crotch burning bacteria.
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
I'd feel better about this experiment if their starting point weren't a pathogen, especially one that causes urinary tract infections.
We'll know something went terribly wrong if the authors can't present their paper because they keep having to excuse themselves to go to the restroom.
The Washington Post is reporting on an apparently credible project to create a simple life form in a petri dish. The goal is two-fold: 1) to actually create a unique life form essentially from scratch and (more importantly) 2) to extensively analyze and model the entire biology of this critter.
Just great - I wonder how long it will be before this:
3) Patent the life form
If corporations can apply for and get patents on human genes (in stark denial of a few million years worth of prior art), why wouldn't the patent office grant this one. Harvard has already got a patent on a mouse after all...
Oops! I almost forgot the obligatory reference:
4) ???
5) Profit
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Mankind believing in a god we cannot see, hear, or feel can constitute belief in the supernatural, absolutely.
... and creates an intelligent life form, from scratch, would man be it's "Creator"? If so, could one say that man is it's God?
But if -mankind- created life, that lifeform COULD see, hear, and feel its creator's (mankind) presence. Two different things.
Contradiction: If they are intelligent enough, they will not believe in the surpernatural.
I'm a Christian myself, so I'm not going to jump on the "what's God got to do with it?" bandwagon.
But the Old Testament quotes you gave don't lead me to the conclusion that this is a Bad Thing.
Psalm 111:10 - "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding" could be used by a scientist of faith to show how his/her success in the lab comes from following the way that God has shown.
Proverbs 1:7 - "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline" would seem to be perfectly suited to science, where wisdom and discipline are highly revered.
You've given biblical quotes that would make a great cross-stitch sampler above the petri dish where Life, Jr. is peacefully sleeping.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
from raw materials, didn't they? (Scientists that is). That's less than 1Kbyte isn't it (fits on a t-shirt). But a virus is much simpler than a bacterium (since it is not self-replicating).
Josh Woodward
1. Create new life form
2. Send to work at Disney Land
3. Profit!
Let us not forget to consider that this process also likely spawn a few nasty mutations, that may have otherwise been easier to kill. There are actually a few mutations of AIDS (or maybe it's HIV) out there.
So yeah, despite the pessimists this might not be such a bad way to go about things.
Key difference: man creating a new life form is not truly creating anything, merely assembling and rearranging what's already in existence. A divine being would be able to create life (and more importantly, existance) out of nothing.
Were it to happen, it would be more logical to call man the "Assembler" of this new life form.
Man creating life would be like making a cake. There's nothing special about assembling existing ingredients (other than the end result tastes yummy).
Everyone remember that hoax? Wired: What If Cold Fusion Is Real?
We are meddling with forces we do not comprehend,
Yes. The technical name for such meddling is "science".
I feel safe now. I hope they'll put up a Created Life Park, where people can sit in an automated tour cart and see different evolved artificial creatures. With modern techonology it will be totally safe.
I am wondering if knowing that they have a system like this in place will have any effects on actual memory. I know that before I owned a palm, I was able to remeber people's phone numbers and such, but now I can't remember them at all because I know that my palm will remember for me. Would a system like this have similar effects on everyday memories?
This is a regular straw man attack. The original, informative post didn't claim viruses were living organisms (in fact, it specifically said that viruses were 20-50x less complex than the simplest forms of life), and it called Penrose a physicist. So how is this response relevant in any way?
Savant
Sorry if someone already posted it. I didn't see it and thought it was a travesty not to make that reference.
I think they constructed a working Polio virus. They didn't design the thing - if they did, they would be mass killers and way ahead of their time.
The scientists in the article are trying to design and construct a new organism, if I understand correctly.
Stop the brainwash
A "scientist" considers *any* hypothesis, and then ranks them according to the facts, the repeatable experimental observations, the simplicity of explanation, etc.
A "dogmatist" has a conclusion in mind and forces all observations to fit that conclusion, even when that conclusion becomes so contorted to lose belief.
As a "scientist" some variations of the creation hypotheis are in my [ large ] inventory of hypotheses, but ranks low in likelihood.
A religious creationist has only one immutable conclusion in mind. And I've met scientists who are dogmatic about their pet theories and dont consider any other.
"One statement is the "only living material can produce living matter"
Biologists say crap like that. It makes life simple. You know the old joke about the alien biologist and the alien engineer? The alien biologist sees a TV for the first time, and promptly goes about dissecting it, drawing and photographing every diode, transistor and capacitor in excruciating detail. Doesn't really explain much about how the system works though.
What does the engineer do?
The engineer presses the power button.
Until recently - VERY LITTLE work has been done on how you would go about creating life from bare chemicals in any kind of serious sense, because until recently, the tools just weren't there. Now the tools are there, and people who think about problems like engineers are getting at those tools. I have no doubt we'll be able to create organisms from scratch, something I think is much more near-term than assembler-based nanotech - in a way, it is nanotech, though.
Artificial intelligence is a much more complicated problem. For example, dispite overwhelming evidence, mention a psi effect in mainstream journals - or even slashdot - and you get mocked. Obviously, there are things going on in our brains we're not aware of, but as one famous hypothesis you mentioned indicates, that just might be quantum nonlocal effects - something that we can engineer.
The arguement that humans have 100-1000+ billion neurons is only part of the problem (although a large one). Simpler creatures exhibit obvious concious reasoning dispite having far fewer neurons. That doesn't mean there's inexplicable magic going on. It just means -we don't know-. So we go about finding out. That's why life is interesting, ya know?
ObShotAtCreationists: 55 years isn't bad compared to how long it took evolution, by all measures, several hundred thousand if not millions and millions of years.
..don't panic
Hey, my mother "created" me, so I guess I should worship her!
It depends how you define God. The Christian God is usually described as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. Humans certainly don't come close in those departments. (Although many aetheists would argue that a god as described above couldn't possibly exist in a world where so many bad things happen seemingly at random.)
Indeed, a far more likely scenario would be that the created lifeform would be more powerful than Man, and thus it would become our God. (At least until an interfering starship captain came by and talked it into self-destructing.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The paper you talk about (Cello, Paul and Wimmer, Science 297: 1016-1018) describes the de novo synthesis of Poliovirus. The authors used polymerases in a cell-free system to translate synthetic cDNA derived from the entire polio genome. The synthetic virus did not differ significantly from the wild-type phenotype (i.e., it was not a "1000 times less potent"). Admittedly, the polymerases used were ultimately of biological origin; however there was no force vital that hindered the synthetic poliovirus. Article specifically states that vitalism was shattered, and that poliovirus is "a chemical with a life cycle". Quo vadis, neovitalism?
And the rest of your troll goes downhill from there. "Life begets life" dates back to the mid-19th century, and is an empirical observation that countered hypotheses like maggots spontaneously arising from rotting meat.
Morphogenesis is a genuine scientific concept, but there is nothing mysterious about it. These "patterns" you speak of, they sound strangely like "genes", don't they? Hmm.
I could find no reference to Penrose and a quantum description of human consciousness. This sounds bogus to me, but even if he did seriously make that claim, human consciousness is in no way a prerequisite for life. A bacterium or an earthworm has no human consciousness.
And finally emergism. Certainly, in living organisms, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The whole can replicate, while the parts cannot. Living organisms are emergent systems, but there is nothing mysterious about emergent systems per se.
The relation of life to matter is indeed an old philosophical problem. My own religion (Hinduism) has some very interesting perspectives on the divisions between mind, matter and spirit. However this has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
I am not personally qualified to talk about AI and whether are not it is feasible. However, judging from the rest of your post, I doubt your competence in that field of human endeavor as well.
My other sig is also a
They tampered in God's domain....
And we are better because we have atomic bombs. Oh give me a break. Research is important and understanding is important, but lets be more cautious. I doubt we are really ready to go down that road. Prove to me the quality of life has measurably improved in all aspects across the entire planet and I'll buy that argument. Saying the invention of internal combution engine saves lives, makes it easier to transport food and so on, but we're simply trading one set of problems for another. In the end, non of these things address the real issue of making life measurably better for everyone. I would think their time would be better spent visiting elementary and high schools inspiring kids to enter research or medicine. Helping to create future scientists that will solve cancer and other problems. My original post wasn't a troll, just because moderators don't agree. There heck of a lot more to life than "people are freaking out". Knowledge != wisdom. Can != should.
would man be it's "Creator"?
I guess so.
If so, could one say that man is it's God?
I guess so.
More important, what if our God is to us what we will be to our creation?
And if we become God of a life, how will we divide ourselves, in ethical and values terms? We aren't Black and White, Evil and Good. We are far more complex. Will our creation realize this, or will they simplify?
Does it justifies religions with multiple Gods? They created us, we will create others, others will create others. Will it ever stop, the believe that your creator is somekind of God?
If it doesn't stop, "Gods" are immortal. If it does, does it justify what Nietzsche said?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
...in securing funding for a billion years or so while evolution takes it's course...
The difference is that God the creator is able to create out of absolute nothing. No raw materials needed.
The scientist still needs some raw materials in order to create.
Also, it is likely that this organism (if it can be 'created', would not survive beyond a few generations and be a failed attempt. If you accept evolution of life here on earth (many people don't, so I feel I should address that); then you also realize that there were many different paths it could have taken, and tried to (numerous mass extinctions changed its course). So, it is also likely that early on that if these living things sprang out of nothing, that it could have happened simultaneously in different places and that not all variations would have survived for various reasons. After all, the odds are pretty much not in favor of the living thing have the proper characteristics to survive in its environment.
What?
I'd like to see someome have a go at making Dyson's metabolic life (c.f. Infinite in All Directions). He had the idea that reproduction was not necessary for life and did some simulations that showed this approach led to a reduction in the complexity threshold for viability of two orders of magnitude. Basically, the idea is that you have a soup of chemicals that can perform metabolism - manage energy and synthesize new chemicals - without accurate reproduction. The thing can divide, but there is no guarentee of success for the daughters.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Do you consider your parents gods? They created you, eh?
"Just tell em Large Marge sent ya." -Large Marge, (the Ghost)
We already do this. We don't fully understand the technology, but my wife and I have created four intelligent life forms. Initially, they were completely dependent on us, and looked to us as "god". As they matured, they became more independent. In fact, the oldest one is 13 years old, and figures she could do much better without us.
Our life forms soon became aware that we were also created, and our parents as well, and so on back in time. They have therefore transferred their ultimate allegience to the Ultimate Creator - while still giving us the respect and temporary allegience due to our role in their creation.
Athiest Version:
1. Put a bunch of gunk in a beaker
2. Wait
3. ???
4. Life!
Monotheistic Version:
1. Put a bunch of gunk in a beaker
2. Wait
3. Ask God for help
4. Life!
Polytheistic Version:
1. Put a bunch of gunk in a beaker
2. Wait
3. Ask gods for help
4. Life!
5. Sacrifice new life to gods
Capitalist Version:
1. Put a bunch of gunk in a beaker
2. Plant outside life
3. Sell company before fraud found
4. Profit!
Table-ized A.I.
from the WP article:
'Even if the organism were to escape stringent confinement and enter the environment, Smith said, "it's a dead duck."'
Well, the HIV-4 virus is extremely fragile outside the human body, also, but that hasn't stopped its spread now, has it...
Even if the organism has the ability to attach to human cells, if the living conditions of the new organism are close to the parameters of the human body, if it gets out of the lab, humans would be perfect walking Petri dishes.
If the DOE is sinking money into funding this project then do they own the subsequent life form? Does J. Craig Venter get to patent its genes and control who does and does not use it. They say that they are planning to hobble it so that it can't leave the lav without their assistance.
I realize that this may sound farfetched (this is a single-celled lifeform). But, what legal precident does this establish with regards to ownership. If they argue "we made it we own it," what does that mean for clones?
Ownership of genes is already a big issue (they can patent you see here)
So that having been said I'm glad to hear J Craig mention "eithics" but I'm still not sutre that I trust him, the DOE or this project.
Leonid Mamtchenkov
I am god. Why do we even care about our creations' superstitions?
After I read that it was a genitial disease and then the statement, a priest and a rabbi.... Isn't this dying to be made into a joke.
Yes but every time I try to see it your way, I get a headache.
...is a simple life form.
Anyone who posts about bad moderation are themselves off-topic and should be moderated accordingly.
This is a wonderful new field of science that has incredible potential for human advancement. It also has incredible potential for misuse and unethical behavior.
Heck, forget honest mistakes made by intelligent, thoughtful, ethical scientists; forget unethical misuses slowly plotted by glacial corporations and governments. What I'm worried about is N years after that, when the biology script kiddies swing into action.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
"If man creates a new life form by definition man is the "Creator" of that life form. If somehow in a distance future man builds on this knowledge and creates an intelligent life form, from scratch, would man be it's "Creator"? If so, could one say that man is it's God?"
No. To claim divinity man is not to create a bacteria but a Universe.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
That makes the "scary" part, to me anyway, the fact that if this were to escape and survive it would displace something else with absolutely unknown consequences
They are making a minimal cell with almost all of the genes stripped out. It is about the equivalant of taking a human baby, cut off it's arms and legs, gouge out its eyes and ears, wipe out its immune system, remove it's entire skeleton, slice out every muscle except the heart and diaphram, rip out it's digestive system, and connect it to a feeding tube of pre-digested nutrient solution.
Now take that baby and toss it out on your local freeway during rushhour traffic. And be terrified that the baby is going to displace the local wildlife and kill us all.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
NC
I think many thinking theists would argue that too. The argument against an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good entity existing is too simple to dismiss (e.g., natural evils, etc.)
...
One can still have a Christian-style God without the omni-this and that; it is in fact the only way to deal with the idea rationally. Nearly omnipotent for example is a good starting point!
Then there are more sophisticated models which have God being omnipotent and all-good, but within limited domains, such as an individual's subjective experience. This starts diverging from canon somewhat though
But there are different types of things. In a sense we "create" our children, but we do not own them -- we are making another creature like ourselves, a peer so to speak, and we have no right to dominate a peer the way we do our subordinates. If we ever did create an artificial intelligence or another form of life similar to our own, we would not be inventing something new, but copying what's already there -- ourselves; and such a thing would not belong to us, although we have had a hand in making it, any more than our children do.
In other words, God has a patent on the making of a "spiritual" being (whatever that means to you), and licenses the patent to us on the stipulation that we respect other spiritual beings as peers. =)
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Way!
Soon we'll have organic spacestations and starships!
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
we could create life from nothing, could we consider ourselves equal with god...
except for his childish qualities of course....
Ave Molech Setting
I wish I had some points to mod this comment up...
[FromTheMorning]
[] Just put that space under the appropriate microscope to see for yourself.
What if some escape and evolve in an uncontrolled environment? ...
CO2 eating cells? What happen to our trees and forests, if the population grow too fast? They don't have natural enemy, they reproduce quickly and evolve quickly (short life span, pretty of food)
What will happen to us if all the trees are gone? What if some choose to digest carbohydrate instead of carbon dioxide?
Great!
Find some answers here. Read before you criticize.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Step back a minute. Are these forces "we" don't comprehend, or forces "YOU" don't comprehend? Just because YOU don't understand the subject, doesn't mean that a genetic scientist doesn't.
More importantly, who cares if we kill a "frankenstien" micro-organism? You seem to be thinking that we're making a multicellular organism here, perhaps with sentience. This is not the case. It's a simple micro-organism. We kill millions of them every day walking down the street, laying in bed, or even floating in space(with a space suit, mind you).
Everybody should stop believing that fiction is somehow a prophecy of what will happen if those "nasty scientists" try treading on something interesting. Do you think that we should hold off a manned expedition to mars because the space creature from planet X will get us? Should we stop using vaccines because someone might slip a mind control drug in there? Doubtful.
It's been a long time.
If we have a problem that big, most organisms have a natural enemy known as "fire". :)
It's been a long time.
Nah...the dispoof of a being compliant to all the abilities above can't exist due to the paradoxes involved (ie creating something he/she/it can't lift and lifting it).
Dumbing the powers down, and restricting its responsibilities (ie he's responsible for the earth being flat, oh no...uh...the planets spinning round...uhhh...well, he created gravity!) just proves more and more that a god is a lie which is losing more and more credibility with every discovery made. The real question is why does humanity need a god/pantheon in the first case? True, religion is a great control mechanism, but why do so many buy into it?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Actually, according to a Catholic theologian when asked about this, to "play God" you would have to invent the rules then sit back and watch what happens within the rules. What we do is try to figure out what the rules are and then do everything we can within them. So trying to create life within the rules that we've got is not "plyaing God" but "playing Man".
Nope, no sig
Reading this just makess that god character more and more ridiculous. The hoops you jump through...BTW, why aren't creatures just popping into existence now then? God got bored?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
A panel of ethicists and religious leaders, convened several years ago at Venter's request, has already wrestled with the latter issue. The group, which included a rabbi and a priest, concluded that if the ultimate goal was to benefit mankind and if all appropriate safeguards were followed, the project could be regarded as ethical.
:-)
Please don't tell me that they walked into to a *bar* to discuss the issue
BTW, where is the *Islam* representation? Omitting that will just give Bin Laden's more excuses to bomb people and whine about being "downtrodden" blah blah.
Table-ized A.I.
Science can only answer the 'can we question'.
The process of law making (aka public morality) is designed to answer the 'should we' question.
For instance we have the technology to import babies from China & India and butcher them for their organs but we don't. An extreme example but you get my point. If you must have an actual example then the nazi death camp experiments are a real case of unconstrained research.
Now I don't have any problem with this particular research but if someone wants to raise the issue than let's debate them in the open. I think it's trite to say that biological research is some how above the law.
I'm curious what hoops I am jumping through? I was stating that in order to actually 'create' you have to do it out of nothing. Thus, these scientists will not be 'creating' life, because they have to work with something.
If you don't believe that God (or other diety(s)) created the universe (emphasis on who not how), then you have to have some other explanation for how matter and energy came into existence.
I never stated that creatures popped into existence, but it is a pretty sketchy area of biology and evolutionary theory. They've been able to get amino acids from non-living things, but they haven't been able to get a living thing from non-living things. There are many theories as to how this took place and most of them boil down to something (single celled organism) just 'popping' into existence. It's what's needed to make that happen that they're trying to figure out.
So, it is highly likely that if this were the case that it would have occured in many places on earth simultaneously/in parallel, and it's also highly likely that not all of them would have survived or have been able to. Thus, I am basically saying that even if they were to get non-living to become living, chances are it would either die right away, or not last more than few generations.
Many people would claim this is a failure, but it's really not.
What?
Banjo? BANJO!O !!!
BaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaNNNNNNNNNNNjjjjjjjjjjjjjOOOOOOOOO
Adult Swim
I've had asked this question before but never received a good answer.
Well, if you dereference the pointer, you'll see that they have the same address.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
They should probably aim a bit lower than a virus at first...Maybe they should try to recreate George W. Bush? Maybe they could even improve upon the original. Maybe they could give it a simple brain or something.
When I read the Headline, I thought a slashdotter somehow "Got Lucky", well another dream down the tubes.
So how does one go about getting a job at this place? I'm always looking for something cool to work on, and this would qualify.
My question is, does the DNA encoding the conterclockwise proteins overlap with the DNA encoding the clockwise proteins? If so, then you can't rip out one without damaging the other. I randomly looked at a few by clicking on the aforementioned link and I did see some overlaps; for example, MG264 and MG265 overlap.
According to GeneQuiz, the entire genome of this creature is only 0.58 Mb (which I presume stands for mega-bases). About 3/4 of the genes have guesses about their function, to varying degrees of certainty.
It's also interesting that this bacterium uses a non-standard transcription. The latter reference above says "UGA, normally a stop codon, in this organism encodes for the amino acid tryptophan.". Does anyone know how common this is?
His parents were scientists too!
Except I think hes the lost son of the Jetsons transported to the past to spread the word!
This is waaaaay off-topic, but I have to say something.
First of all, I am not a thiest. Okay, as far as religion and those that 'but into it', it is a very simple matter. There seems to be an inherent need in human beings to 'believe' in something. There are also anicllary needs for belonging, community, 'solid' moral grounding, easy-to-grasp explanations of nature and the universe, having an enemy to hate, etc.
Religion, in all of it's various forms, fulfills these needs for a vast majority of people in the world.
Yes. The technical name for such meddling is "science".
'Funny'? Did someone take this as a joke? 'Insightful', certainly, but definitely not 'funny'. Meddling with forces we do not comprehend is what's brought us this far. Most animals run from fire, giving a force they do not comprehend a very wide berth. Our ancestors meddled with it, they learned how to control and use it. I'm sure a great many of them got burned before they got it right. People still burn to death on a daily basis because of a fire getting out of hand. But if we hadn't meddled with forces we didn't comprehend, where would we be now?
Electricity was a force we did not comprehend. Radio. Magnetism - should navigators have used compasses if they couldn't write out and solve Maxwell's equations? Meddling with forces we do not comprehend is what humans DO. It's our big evolutionary advantage, that where most creatures will run from things they don't understand, we'll go right up to them and start prodding, even at the risk of our lives. Meddling with forces we do not comprehend has won us the Earth. Meddling with forces we do not comprehend can win us the stars too. Maybe it can win us near-immortality. If you don't want to meddle with forces you don't comprehend, switch off your computer, take off all your clothes that contain synthetic fibres and live in a cave.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
ok, considering that the jewish and arab people are virtually genotypically identical, (excluding influences from the far-flung diaspora), this is patently rediculous... Genome doesn't encompass belief system... Talk about talking out your rectal cavity...
There are more than one greenhouse gas (methane and CO2 come to mind) but only CO2 is present in any quantity in the atmosphere. Making energy AND getting rid of CO2 is more or less impossible... because CO2 requires an energy INPUT to break up. As far as creating life forms just to crack CO2... we already have these. They're called green plants. And they already do such a good job that in spite of all the CO2 inputs to the atmosphere, it remains a trace constituent. The bottom line is that I doubt that there's much reason to create special creatures for this purpose, since it's unlikely they could do better than the plants that have been evolving to scavenge CO2 for millions of years. It would be a lot more feasible and less risky to just move to alternative energy sources. Sean
And maybe when they are done, they can store them in rusting canisters in a medical storage facility. Where those said canisters can accidently be punctured by a fire axe, and spread the now mutated organism through the air.
And after the chop up and burn the cadivers, it can be spread to a nearby graveyard !!
COOL!
U.S. Govt: "And now we award Dr. Romaro's development research team their requested grant."
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Jesus, that's hot. I'm going to have to go jerk off now.
why do we always ask the moral questions after we do it?
yea, this is touched on in a number of sci-fi works, including "super-toys last all summer long," the short story that inspired the movie AI. For a more dudical approach, check out Terminator 2.
1. Amino Acids
2. ????
3. Life!!
I've had asked this question before but never received a good answer. If it was a good question, then you'd get a good answer. As it stands, the question doesn't real mean anything, except in how you define "God" which is really quite arbitrary.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
Something I thought about once was getting together 46 different people, taking a chromosome from them each, and throwing them together to make a new individual, completely at random.
Of course, after Captain America destroyed my evil cloning plant, this won't happen, but was my idea feasible?
That wouldn't of really be more successful, though. If right now, they live (usually) harmlessly in the urinary track of every human, then that is a huge habitat. If they start killing off the human race in a plague of bloody toilet water, then they will drastically reduce their habitat, perhaps even killing off so many hosts that they will no longer be spread.
Think about it, as a species which is better, small pox or the common cold?
(and yes, I know that viruses are not life, therefore not "species" yadda yadda yadda, but the example still holds)
omnia tua castra sunt nobis
I know you're a troll, but lets face it....
If it was as simple as slaughtering foetuses for research, do you think there would even *be* a controversy?
Of course not.
to simply abandon the idea and not experiment with it?
I'm sorry.. but those who think that "creating life" or other forms of genetic research are unethical are nothing but religious whackjobs.
yes, when it comes to genetically engineering HUMANS, there are ethical, and more importantly, sociological concerns, but they are not about "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "evil"; they are about society living and dealing with the consequences.
This research is fantastic... I see no ethical issues whatsoever.
How many asses will it have?
You have no chance to survive make your time.
"don't fuck with mother nature or mother nature will find a way to fuck with you" Whats to say this thing that is grown in some lab won't be the next super virus.
Is it just me, or does it seem that 3 million dollars is far too inadequate for an experiment of this magnitude? Salary and equipment costs, I'm sure, add up over 3 years.
Unfortunatly, this level of ignorance is why I am cutting back on slashdot. Not only do you have no reason to believe this stripped down cell will be dangerous, its very likely a bacterium like this existed...and was driven extinct by a more complex version. You're basically implying that with some random tinkering we could create a life form able to supplant existing life on earth. This isn't reasonable.
Don't talk about morality in this. In Genisis, does it not say "And God created man in his own image" or something to that effect? Well, God made life, God made us in his image, so we can make life. End of story.
Ok folks, move along, nothing to see here.
I accept what you are saying but I disagree that there is an inherent need to believe in something (at least from my own perspective).
It's an interesting philosophical point though:
Is it better to have believe in a lie because it is "comfortable" or to not believe the lie? (Although I must say I am perfectly comfortable grounding myself in reality).
Then what would they believe in?
However, it did not produce all amino acids required for life as we know it. Moreover, there is no known chemical pathway to go from a bunch of amino acids to DNA/RNA. Plus there is also significant debate about whether the initial atmosphere they began with existed on Earth at the time of the origins of life.
All of what you've said is true, but let's not forget one other very salient point: The Miller-Urey experiment took place over a period of days (or weeks; I forget which). The evolution of self-replicating RNA and DNA took place over a period of about 100 million years.
Let's not cane too hard on these experiments, simply because they couldn't reproduce in a few days what it took nature a hundred million years to do .
SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.
I think that for some, yes, believing in a lie is the only way that they will be able to go through life. It's better for them and I think that's what matters.
now that this hit the popular press, how long do you thing venter's U.S. Energy dept funding is going to last? given the current regulatory climate in funding human embyronic stem cell research, one would think that those same legislators ensuring restrictions in this arena are not going to be so thrilled with the US gov't funding research that news headlines trumpet as 'playing god'. dude, your research funding has been slashdotted.
... "We'll have a debate on what should be published and what shouldn't," Venter said. "We may not disclose all the details that would teach somebody else how to do this."
in truth, as has been noted in prior posts, he's not exactly proposing starting from scrath. indeed, ventner has had a long standing interest in the basic living unit prob for some time now, and now that he's primarily been hyping personal genome sequencing, it's nice to see him trying to push a scientific frontier once more.
there's an interesting CNN quote from him on the topic
somewhat ironic as he was also accused of withholding info on his company's sequencing efforts when they were published a couple years back (although there were no security reasons in that case). he seems to be prepping ahead of time here, but how can someone judge if he's really accomplished what they set out to do without adequate scientific review of the data, and more importantly, allowing other scientists to determine if the data is reproducible? it's like saying 'i made this gold from lead, but i can't show you how'. making this type of comment so far ahead of the efforts seems odd.
anyway, it's all mute if his funding gets nixed.
Is anyone else not impressed that scientists are trying to create a new way to make our balls itch? (sorry ladies.)
For crying out loud... There was a time when our collective intellect was used for something meaningful... for technlogy and exploration... to expand our territory into new frontiers, and to improve our standards of living. We put a man on the moon for crying out loud... it wasn't genetic research that did that, it was math, it was physics... it was technology, it was our tools.
Now it seems all the scientific community wants to do is disprove religions. "Gee... if we make a cell, we're showing that it couldn't possibly have been God that created life... "
Well screw that. Instead of trying to burden mankind with thoughts of hopelessness that there's nothing beyond their pathetic little lives, let's lift ourselves off of this rock and see what's going on beyond it... Compared to the vastness and grandeur of the universe this planet is a dismal place, and I for one can't wait to leave it.
I am tired of hearing about "discoveries" and "breakthroughs" involving nothing more than some goop in a petri dish. Do you honestly believe that some blob of crap is going to tear down thousands of years of religious development? If so, you have more faith in your "religion" than the fundamentalist muslim suicide bombers had in theirs.
Bryan A. Hodges
(I'm not an anonymous coward, just lazy.)
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Has anyone here read Isaac Asimov's "I Robot", in which humans create a superior artificial life-form, that then refuses to believe that any inferior creature (in this case human) could have created it.
I hope it goes right up theirs first, so they
get appropriate motivation to fix their mistake.
A better analogy would be taking a computer with some unknown (or poorly understood) OS, CPU etc, taking out the hard drive and deleting/changing some of the data on the drive, reinstall drive and see if the thing crashes or not.
This is classic reverse engineering, once they understand how everything in this cell works they will try to install their own OS and write some new (hopefully not 'killer') apps for it!
Why not produce lifeforms that can (for example) consume greenhouse gasses and produce energy? That would certainly reduce the strain on the environment.
They're called trees. Go plant one.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
"It is very fragile and really can't live outside the laboratory," said Hutchison.
"Pandora's Box"?
I never got the playing god argument. If playing god is so wrong, why were we made in god's image. And wouldn't that make these scientists godly people? Also, if Jesus Christ is the son of God, and the whole trinity thing, ( what were they smoking? ) and being a Christian means your supposed to be like Christ, therefore like God, then wouldn't playing god be a Christ like, and therefore Christian, thing to do?
Nice Marmot
I agree completely. As long as they don't push their beliefs onto anyone else.
As for his credentials, I believe Penrose is a mathematician. His father, the better known Roger Penrose, was also a mathematician. The elder Penrose produced a set of wooden blocks that, when shaken, linked into patterned chains -- a little demonstration of order arising from chaos. Living under his materialist father's shadow, it's not surprising that Penrose the Younger rebelled a little.
Scores of chicken-and-egg problems remain. The best they could hope for is modifying an existing lifeform, and that's boring.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In a follow-up bulletin, the coroner has announced that the apparent cause of death was repeated application of torchfire and rustic peasant pitchfork.
to the old phrase your parents used to use... I created you, I can destroy you!! Or was that just mine...
You're nothing; like me.
i wasn't ducking your questions as they weren't posed to me per se but posted in this forum. moreover, i was stating facts and not questions as you were.
;)
And you still haven't answered the questions, you've only given me an excuse as to why you haven't. And don't try to turn this back on me.
you've picked up on some of the points that peter duesberg originally put out. thus i also wanted to raise the possibility that his motivation might be influenced by other personal factors other than the science
Don't try to pin this on Duesberg, either. He's not the only one who has questioned the HIV==AIDS mantra. And he's not the only one to suffer financially, emotionally, and physically from having the audacity to do so. AIDS is BIG MONEY.
(1) & (4) are semantic issues, right?
No, they are not.
Concering #1, the definition of epidemic is specific. The pattern of AIDS does not meet the criteria, yet it is called an "epidemic" anyway. Why is this?
the larger question you were posing prevoiusly was whether HIV caused an immunodeficiency that allowed secondary infections. i think the data is unequivocal on this point.
So the immunodeficiency "allowed" secondary infections? I suppose you've chosen this verb because you can't say "caused." In fact, you know that ALL of the secondary infections existed in absence of HIV before the alleged discovery of HIV. And the data is certainly not unequivocal.
as per what secondary infections occur in 'AIDS' caused by HIV-1, this has changed somewhat over time because people learned more about the disease and some of the early second infections became treatable and non-issues (thus saving lives).
You didn't answer my question. How many times has the list of secondary diseases changed? And, once you figure that out, can you form the list of these so-called secondary infections for each time the list changed? Wouldn't the contents of those lists be interesting? I find it to be very important since a diagnosis of AIDS has always been either a death sentence or "buy our drugs if you want to live" sentence. It's just ripe for abuse, isn't it?
as per question (2), i don't know what burroughs-wellcome does with its money but am generally suspicious of large drug companies. as per question
This might be my foot in the door!
(3), supply whichever peter duesberg theory you want as this is one of his issues. he stopped scientifically publishing on HIV for the past 4-5 years, and has primarily gone back to his cancer work.
Weak, weak, weak. I can reference writings that are NOT by Duesberg that discuss the positive link between KS and amyl nitrate ("poppers"). Why do you keep trying to pin this on Duesberg? He's not the only opponent of the HIV==AIDS hypothesis. Is Duesberg your scapegoat?
do you have specific knowledge of this or perhaps have done any molecular biology research to back this up? HIV has been isolated numerous times. it's real. it's not so hard to do. you can in fact isolate just it's nucleic acid genome, put this into cells, and they will make the virus.
Wrongo Dongo, amigo. It is you that has to back up your claim that the virus has been isolated. You can't just assert that it has been isolated and then tell me that I have to disprove you. The easiest way for us to solve this is for you to link to the paper which describes the circumstances under which the HIV virus was isolated. Don't tell me to go to some website and dig around. Just link to the paper. There is a prize for anyone who can claim isolation of the HIV virus. Perhaps you'd like to claim it?
peter duesberg (again the leading scientific figure who used to question the HIV/AIDS link) has done the same exact experiment with other retroviruses. it's a pretty simple one.
Yes, let's bring it back to Duesberg again. This is not convincing.
No. Why are you so hung up on this company?
Because they are the manufacturer of AZT and have thus made millions off of the "AIDS epidemic."
I decided to professionally continue studying retroviruses after seeing a friend die of HIV-1 infection that progressed to AIDS while I was a grad student. Pretty sad as it was the year that these drugs called protease inhibitors were coming out experimentally and he was trying so hard to get in a protocol so he could get the meds.
One question: was your friend on AZT therapy?
I'm not going to get into a debate of whether you have or I have on this topic because I think you're coming at it with an open mind and willing to examine information or evidence as presented....
Flattery will get you nowhere.
I decided to put my own curiosity on the research bench and test things myself. It's no conspiracy. HIV kills CD4+ T cells. Stopping the virus saves these important immune cells and it prolongs life.
I'm not the slightest bit impressed. For all I know, you could be working for a pharmecutical company and lying about your job. The profit motive is certainly there for just such a fabrication, considering that AIDS has more money than God does, and the only thing which might stop the gravy train are those which actually question the bald and hollow assertions which support the HIV==AIDS house of cards. And your "stopping the virus" (through drugs, presumably) is the same line that the big AIDS drug manufacturers have been preaching since the alleged outbreak.
If you answer my questions you will gain more credibility with me.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I think he'd kick god's ass.
Humans are currently causeing the 6th mass extinction world wide, we already destroying other life forms, what the point of creating New "life forms"? and yet we over populated with ratz, humnas, roaches, and llamas. And Yet we need new "life forms"? Also while training these new "life forms" to fight Iraq, what if something goes wrong and they get all advance/smart and stuff and go VS all humans... Like remember the story of StarCraft? Zerg created to help The Terran (Humans)... but things went wrong... What if we experience the same thing???
Better yet, they can both shoot up. Mr. Pathetic takes no drugs and ernest Science-cures-all-guy takes all the drugs he wants ...
But wait, that experiment has already been done!! People with no access to drugs die more quickly! Who would have thunk?
What the hell, they should still repeat the experiment and see it is repeatable. At least this off-topic thread that keeps getting moded-up (?!) might die sooner.
I'm surpised no one has commented on the technical obsticals/difficulties associated with this project. It says they have already "hollowed out" the organism to the point where it has a mimimal set of genes in the previous work. Exactly what is the next step that they plan to take? Looking for ways to cut the number down further? Or are they actually planning on engineering new genes to take the place of 2 old genes? If so, will they try introducing genes from other (presumably prokaryotic) organisms, or engineering them de novo? (which seems pretty far fetched) Also, how will they define success? How will they no when there is no possible way to get the number of genes any smaller? How about promoters, operators and other regulatory sequences that aren't actually transcribed/translated? Are they going to try and cut these down too? They could try and aggregate genes together into an operon to cut down the number of promoters. Also they might be able to delete an operator and its associated inducer/repressor without killing the cell- just making it less efficient. And finally, how efficient does the thing need to be to qualify as alive? What environment must the organism survive in to qualify? This seems to be a key issue, which is fairly arbitrary. But then in biology, many things are.
It was meant to be FUNNY, but I hope you are right. I hope we aren't that stupid, but humanity has done some pretty stupid things in the past and also now. Hopefully the future won't get worse.
Watch 'Brazil' by Terry Gilliam if you get the chance. You'll like it :)
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
but I don't. In fact, a scientist whose original arguments you're using, wouldn't agree with half the stuff you've written to either. Listen, you started this thread with the left field assertion that HIV does not cause AIDS. Then you back up the assertion with questions and not facts. You finish 'with go read this lammo website that tells you all about it'. Guess what? I write a response based listing facts used to prove that HIV causes AIDS. Yeah, that's the ticket, list some evidence before making an assertion that you can't back up. Give it a shot. You spend a good deal of your posts getting hyped about AZT and know full well that HIV/AIDS existed prior to any individuals getting AZT. You probably know that most of the people in the world that are HIV infected and develop AIDS never see AZT or other antivirals. In the absence of any other information other than HIV is found in many people who have this immunodeficiency whose disease manifestation is called AIDS, you prefer to ignore Occamm's razor and go with what is mostly a crowd of scientific misfits, dilettantes, and yahoos (check out the board of your source material website) that claims that people get AIDS because of poppers, their nutrition, because they take antivirals, because their 'lifestyle' is unhealthy for whatever reason (Falwell's fav), because they live in Africa, yadda yadda yadda ... but not because they're HIV
infected. But of course, there's many
more facts than just the etiologic association of HIV and AIDS as I've listed
previously. I don't think you were
able to really dispute a single one of then, right? Even that apocryphal claim that HIV hasn't been isolated
doesn't sound too strong now, does it?
(I think I'll let someone else contend for the lammo website's prize on
this). Given that you're so 'fact'
based why don't you start with some and show us what you know about the topic
before demanding answers to questions to a thesis you can't back up? What causes AIDS and how? Why does HIV not cause AIDS? These two are simple and would
substantiate the thesis of your post before venturing off into being po'ed at
burroughs-wellcome, claiming you have scientific proof of the link of KS and
poppers (i presume at least a couple papers from reputable scientific journals
and not someone's manifesto/novel), what's the proper definition of an epidemic
(actually the UN refers to the HIV/AIDS crisis as a pandemic ... but they're
probably similarly clueless in your book), etc. Stick to the big questions and fact based evidence first for
the claim you put forward and then deviate into your lists of random questions.
Are you out of your depth?
Yes
Will you ever admit it?
No
Typical of a good /.er?
Absolutely.
Excuse me, there's someone knocking on the door... wow, nice suit. Uh oh.
"No, sir, we in the government don't get nice suits."
Listen, you started this thread with the left field assertion that HIV does not cause AIDS.
... but they're probably similarly clueless in your book
/.er? Absolutely.
"You started this!" How middle-school of you. My assertion is not left-field.
I write a response based listing facts used to prove that HIV causes AIDS. Yeah, that's the ticket, list some evidence before making an assertion that you can't back up. Give it a shot.
You have listed no facts. You have merely reitereated the point in dispute, that HIV==AIDS. I refuse to believe it until you show me the evidence. The burden of proof is on you, not on me. Just becuase I go against the single most well-funded disease research in human history does not shift the burden of proof.
You spend a good deal of your posts getting hyped about AZT and know full well that HIV/AIDS existed prior to any individuals getting AZT.
You are wrong. AZT existed before HIV and was shelved. Why was it shelved? What were its side effects?
You probably know that most of the people in the world that are HIV infected and develop AIDS never see AZT or other antivirals.
I doubt that there is anyone who is infected with HIV and who is developing AIDS as a result of it. Where are the millions of corpses from those Africans who should be dying from AIDS right now? We all saw images of what Ebola did, but the so-called AIDS epidemic (which is called an epidemic despite the fact that it does NOT follow an epidemic pattern) in Africa is nothing but talk so far.
you prefer to ignore Occamm's razor and go with what is mostly a crowd of scientific misfits, dilettantes, and yahoos
Yes, it's so much easier to slander your opponent than to refute his argument, isn't it? This is called argumentum ad hominem and it's a logical flaw. It's a sign that your argument is weak.
that claims that people get AIDS because of poppers
It claims no such thing. It claims that people get KS from poppers. Even the exalted Gallo has shifted his position on KS and poppers, where previously it was "caused by AIDS (HIV)."
But of course, there's many more facts than just the etiologic association of HIV and AIDS as I've listed previously.
So why don't you share some? Your ad hominems are getting boring.
I don't think you were able to really dispute a single one of then, right? Even that apocryphal claim that HIV hasn't been isolated doesn't sound too strong now, does it?
Your attempts to indimidate me will fail. Produce the document which shows that HIV has been isolated. Until you can produce this document, I think all of your claims about HIV are baseless and don't need to be refuted.
I think I'll let someone else contend for the lammo website's prize on this
Probably because you can't. You don't have a document that shows HIV has been isolated.
Given that you're so 'fact' based why don't you start with some and show us what you know about the topic before demanding answers to questions to a thesis you can't back up?
I don't need a thesis because my position is skepticism, not belief. Show me the evidence that HIV exists and causes AIDS. The evidence is not in your favor.
What causes AIDS and how?
We first have to agree as to what "AIDS" is. The definition of AIDS keeps changing. What is the list of the so-called "secondary diseases" this year?
Why does HIV not cause AIDS?
You're assuming a point in dispute with this question. If HIV has not been isolated, then why do you believe it exists?
i presume at least a couple papers from reputable scientific journals and not someone's manifesto/novel
It's very hard for those who doubt the HIV==AIDS hypothesis to get published in reputable scientific journals. Anyone who deviates from the Holy Sacred Truth that HIV==AIDS is treated with disdain, scorn, and violence. The rude and disrespectful way that you've treated me is an example of this.
what's the proper definition of an epidemic (actually the UN refers to the HIV/AIDS crisis as a pandemic
This is not a useless question. If the UN calls AIDS a "pandemic" yet AIDS does not meet the requirements for a pandemic, then why is AIDS labeled as much?
Stick to the big questions and fact based evidence first for the claim you put forward and then deviate into your lists of random questions.
I'm all about facts and I am still waiting for you to give me some. And I note that you can't seem to answer my questions. Why? They aren't unfair. Are you afraid of the answer?
Are you out of your depth? Yes[.] Will you ever admit it? No
Your attempts to intimidate me will fail. If you're such a big-shot scientist then you'll produce the document that shows that HIV has been isolated. You'll also be able to explain why AIDS is called an epidemic or pandemic even though it doesn't meet the criteria.
Typical of a good
I'm just "another typical slashdotter." Do you know what this is? It's another typical ad hominem argument. In other words, your argument sucks. You rely on ad hominems, ad numerams, and ad verecundiams to try and make your point which gets weaker and weaker every day. You dismiss my questions as if they were irrelevent when they most certainly are not.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Remember that Simpsons episode where Lisa creates a life form. Well, Lisa was their god...
I find this dubious, and the NIH spends vastly more on cancer research: see their official funding page
You win points for actually linking to data, and what you say about the NIH is partly true. I wouldn't call twice the amount on cancer research to be "vastly more." I would call it twice as much. If it were one hundred times greater then I might accept "vastly more." Then again, consider the rate of AIDS cases verses the rate of cancer cases and the story changes. Also consider that you've only linked to funding done by NIH. Are they the only group funding AIDS research? So I don't think my statement is as dubious as you claim it to be.
Even Duesberg contends that HIV exists. The genome has been sequenced, the structures of the protease and reverse transcriptase have beeen solved.
I notice that you do not claim that the virus has been isolated. You claim it exists and attempt a sort-of ad verecundiam by sticking Duesberg onto it (even though you don't provide any evidence that Duesberg believes such a thing, so you could be making it up), but who cares what Duesberg thinks anyway? Either the virus has been isolated or it hasn't been. You could very well be making up your statements about protease structures and reverse transcriptase since you post no links to your claims.
There is a one-thousand pound reward offered to anyone who can isolate the alleged HIV virus. Are you prepared to claim it?
You people are more interested in dogma than science- just as bad as the creationists.
Not only is this a cheap-ass "you people" ad hominem, but it's really ironic that you'd accuse me of being "like a creationist" when all I am asking for is evidence and also in light of the the language coming out of the mouths of the HIV==AIDS adherents. Consider:
"Dr. Mark Wainberg, president of the International AIDS Society, called for jailing AIDS dissidents, whom he called 'HIV deniers' (his explicit analogy to "Holocaust deniers').
"Said Wainberg: 'If we could succeed and lock a couple of these guys up, I guarantee you the HIV-denier movement would die pretty darn quickly.'"
--John Lauritsen in AIDS REALISM VERSUS THE HIV HYPOTHESIS
As for AZT, everyone with more than a basic knowledge of biology and chemistry understands how dangerous it is- a brute force attack on reverse transcription (and, unfortunately, normal DNA replication). It's a particularly poor example, because the nasty side effects are obvious; why don't you try arguing against the therapeutic power of, say, Crixivan or d4t instead?
"Basic knowledge of biology." "Pretty poor example." "Crixivan." "d4t." You know what? Your efforts to indimidate me will fail. If you can spout off these condescending phrases and big words then you can also muster up the chutzpah to actually answer my questions. As is, your own words condemn you. Do you work for a big pharm company?
My bringing up AZT is certianly NOT a "particularly poor example." AZT was the AIDS therapy for years. It was a veritable gold mine for Burroughs-Wellcome during those years. Yes, the nasty side-effects are obvious, but trying to cloud them with language such as "brute force attack on reverse transcription" only makes your argument more suspicious, particularly in light of the questions that you've failed to answer. What, exactly, are the side effects of AZT? When and why was AZT shelved?
Here's a side story which helps my position and hurts yours. A while back, a major network aired a special about gay adoption. (As a gay adoptive parent, I was particularly interested.) They highlighted a gay couple who had taken in five foster children, four of which had HIV. A bit later in the show, the narrator explained that the HIV in these children "went away," a phenomenon that has "only been observed in children."
Under my (lack of) belief (specifically, that there is no such thing as HIV and it certainly does not cause the disease-with-the-ever-changing-definition "AIDS") this is easy to explain: the children were never given the poisons used to treat "AIDS" and thus never suffered from this alleged "epidemic."
How do you explain it under your belief system, you know, the one that dictates that HIV==AIDS?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.