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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.
When you already have George Bush ?
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.
That is simply because we cannot yet manipulate things at the molecular level in sufficient quantity or resolution. Once we can, then someone might not even start with an existing organism's shell script wrapper.
Of course, I suppose, even then, they would not be starting from "nothing".
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! Ha Ha Ha! Igor, Bring me more brains.
Yes, Master. More Brains Hee hee Hee hee.
How ya like dat?