Life Made to Order

Roland Piquepaille writes "When he was president of Celera Genomics, Craig Venter was the leader of the private project which deciphered the human genome. Now, he has another goal: create custom-made organisms -- one DNA letter at a time. 'Venter's objective is not merely to tweak existing life forms by inserting genes that confer specific traits -- the main tactic in conventional genetic engineering. Instead he wants to assemble an entire genome, DNA letter by DNA letter, putting together only the genes he wants: those necessary for an organism's survival and those that will allow it to carry out a desired task.' If successful, maybe in a decade, this could yield new sources of energy or novel drugs. Venter is not alone in this quest. Other institutions, private companies or universities, have similar efforts under development. Check this column for a summary of this eye-opening -- but quite long -- Technology Review article."

Comments

Cold Cure V1.0 Product Recall

[nagora]

Version 1.0 of our anti-cold virus virus has developed an error whereby it instead shuts down the customer's nerve system. The company acknowledges that more debugging of the genetic code should have been done and assures any surviving members of the human race that these issues have been addressed in version 1.1. This is a pre-recorded message as I'm afraid we're all dead at the moment.

TWW

Re:I have a great Idea!

[robbo]

Reminds me of a cartoon that somebody pasted on the door to our lab several years ago:

Journalist: Dr, how do you respond to your critics that say you're playing god?
Dr: I strike them dead with a bolt of lightning.

ah, The Simpsons

[Johnso]

Bart: "How would I go about creating a half-man, half-monkey-type creature?"
Mrs. Krebopple: "I'm sorry, that would be playing God."
Bart: "God shmod! I want my monkey-man!"

Okay, here's my request list...

[Fritz Benwalla]

I would like:

1. A turkey that grows with a stomach full of stuffing.
2. A small monkey-like creature that keeps the shower water at a constant temperature.
3. A virus that makes just one of my "enlarge your penis" spams true, but then then another one that brings it back down for easy storage.
4. A tiny giraffe. All the convenience of a small dog but you wouldn't have to bend all the way down to pet it.

Please let me know when I can pick these up. Thank you.

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Energy?

[Cyno01]

this could yield new sources of energy

Are they going to engineer hampster like creatures that will never tire to run on little wheels or what?

Re:Here it is

[whovian]

Looks like you're designing DNA!

Genome Assistant can help
you compose your artificial sequence.
First, tell us how you plan to design it....
-- Clippy