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Scientists Creating Life From Scratch
Rubberbando writes "MSNBC is running a story about bioengineering organisms to do specific tasks such as produce hydrogen or ethenol. It also goes into the risks and ethical issues of playing with this sort of science. Some of the scientists involved are saying it's more of an art instead of a science due to its 'biohacking' style of experimentation."
This type of biological research convinces me firmly that
the intelligent design (ID) is just another horse crap
made up by humans. The base of ID's claim lies on the belief
that the design of some rudimentary living organisms are
just too complex to be built by accident. Hence
some higher intelligence -- beyond human intelligence --
must be involved in creating such organisms. But now, we
are stepping closer to make one on our own. What does that
say about humans? Are we becoming a god?
No. It's all about perception. From our point of view, some
things may look too complex to be formed accidentally. But
as science advances, our perception does evolve (or should).
If our society continues to exist (not sure if that happens
in Kansas or in Bill Frist's home, but let's not go there),
then what it seems an impossible task may not be so impossible
any more.
Well, that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
As I understand it, it's trying to make it into more of a science, where previously it had lacked order and had merely been creative guessing which genes to put where. Seems like a much better method to me - start from the most basic (well, almost most basic... genes -> nucleotides -> atoms -> quarks... but you get the gist) elements and put them together building-block style. Go modern science.
Combining the genetic material of different species, I think we can all agree, is hardly creating life from scratch.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
in fact, my job is to record all the data from hundreds, well tens of thousands, of such mutations, sometimes only in one small section of the exact same original organism or protein.
....).
and then we crank out thousands of colonies for each of these, or at least we hope we do.
So, from my viewpoint, the concept of manufacturing an organism to crank out oil needs to be thought thru quite a bit - what if it harvests not just the biowaste of corn husks but starts eating grasses and other plant life? what if it hybridizes or mutates (there is solar radiation and chemical interference and ingestion) and loses its species-specific behavior - as bioengineered rice did in China and India when it hybridized with nearby "wild" rice crops due to their farming practices and this thing called nature (wind, storms, excessive rainfall, seeds falling out during transport
Be careful what you wish for - sure you may be able to make a plant that creates oil, but it may end up turning your front yard from grass into sludge, or attack your food crops.
It's happened before, and that's one of the joys of biochemistry - biological processes change and adapt and mutate and it's always fascinating in this multiply interdependent bio system we live in.
Now, if you want to experiment on Mars or in space colonies inside large asteroids, be my guest. But we live here. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you need to do something right now...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, not really. Based on the title I was hoping for a story on synthetic abiogenesis.
Life truely from scratch is the, ummmm, "Holy Grail" of the life sciences. The true uncharted territory.
This is just another story about genetic engineering.
KFG
"We do not have a model which reliably predicts some of the most simple chemical reactions, much less those in biochemistry."
That may have been true 30 years ago, but it's not now. In fact, we can predict the dynamics of biological processes, such as gene expression, signal transduction, and metabolism. The hard part about predicting these systems is that _there are so many components_.
No, it is still correct today. E.g. the Arrhenius equation describes the dynamics of most chemical reactions. That doesn't mean it describes the actual reaction mechanism.
Yes, you can predict the dynamics of those few (but central) processes that have been studied. But that's something different to what I was talking about. That's a situation where you know the what the component does and are wondering about the how of how they all interact together.
What I was talking about is the prediction of the what and not the how. For instance, given a DNA sequence for an enzyme, you cannot predict its structure. (yet)
And even given the structure, you cannot predict the function an enzyme. (ab initio, anyway. Homology comparisons can help do it of course. But since we're talking 'deep understanding' here, I take it to mean ab initio)
We can't know the mechanism offhand either. In fact, some of the most well studied enzymes in existance still have unknown reaction mechanisms. You can't predict how the enzyme will interact with any given substrate.
So basically, what I'm said and am saying now is that there is absolutely no way you can build an ab-initio model of a cell in the forseeable future.
That doesn't mean that you can't make abstractions and make simplified models which are useful. But you cannot make an ab-initio model based on physics, which is what I was talking about.
Now, if you can tell me a non-empirical model which will accurately provide information about chemical reaction kinetics, I'd like to know about it. Because that's what I do research in.
And you can't point out that those organisms exist in an environment where they reproduce in numbers that would never be possible in nature. According to them -- well, one person in particular -- "it doesn't matter how loosely we hold the whip; it's still a form of slavery." That's more or less a direct quote.
And when you point out the symbiotic relationships that already exist in most living organisms -- animals in particular -- they refuse to believe that it's true. Something about the military-industrial complex of medicine trying to make us believe what they want us to believe or some crap like that.
It's hard not to laugh when someone tells me that humans are evil evil creatures for creating antibiotics and vaccines. Because someone think of the poor bacteria and viruses! I only wish I were joking right now.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
This is 'life from scratch' in the same sense that writing a plugin for firefox is 'creating a browser from scratch'.
It would be interesting to try to argue your way around the GPL using that reasoning ('yes your honour I wrote it from scratch using two existing GPL programs that I put together, so the GPL doesn't apply').
The case might last, um... 15 seconds..?
God created the Universe, Earth, and everything in it.
"Science" is the word we use to describe the Study of God's Creation. Hence, science is the study of God himself by witness of His Creation.
I will NOT tell you who God is. Or what He wants. I do not know. And it is my firmest belief no one else does either.
We are trying to understand how we came to be.
I have to take as a given that if I was created with a sense of curiousity, my Creator intended me to use it to try to find Him, wherever and whatever He is.
He may even be another set of completely natural processes following laws of probablity... how am I to know until we study, contemplate, and hopefully finally understand?
I believe the the worst we can do is to do nothing.
If God had wanted Sheep, he would have left it at that.
Our Creator has already also provided us with all sorts of tools we can adapt and use as we see fit. We have already known about the atoms that make us up for some time... now we are learning more about actually how to assemble them in other ways. How is this any more wrong learning how to ignite wood so we can warm ourselves on a cold night?
To sum up, from all I have seen and understand, Science is the truest study of God possible, as the basic tenents of the Scientific Methods rely on observations and reproducible phenomena, not hearsay. This observable phenomena was authored by God himself, using God's laws ( aka "Laws of Physics" ) that no man can put asunder.
I will not say I am "religious" because I believe "religion" is the word we use to describe how Man creates God in his image.
It is my strongest belief that Religion has very little to do with God and a helluva lot to do with maintaining hierarchical authority and obedience in the religious organization.
In those cases, a God was created to give an illusion of authority so the "middlemen" who know how to play the game can use their God to claim authority over the masses.
Read Stanley Milgram's research on "Obedience to Authority" if you need any reason to question just how prone to subordination we are. It all goes back to basic economics, as it requires a lot less effort on our part to follow than to lead, but if you can get enough followers, its worth your while to lead.
If I am wrong, may God have mercy on my soul.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]