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."

Comments

Title misleading?

[Swamii]

The article states,

Though scientists have been combining the genetic material of two species for 30 years now, their work has remained relatively simplistic.

Combining the genetic material of different species, I think we can all agree, is hardly creating life from scratch.

Re:Becoming a god

[Nuclear Elephant]

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.

The fallacy in your statement is in the fact that these organisms weren't merely created by accident - they were intelligently created by scientists in a lab. So the fact that this occurred only reinforces the supposition that it could not, in fact, happen on accident. As far as the supernatural beings requirement, manufacturing simple organisms is one thing, but we are still infinitely far off from being able to manufacture another human (at least without a few beers and some luther vandross). Put simply: they just proved intelligent design could occur.

Re:Becoming a god

[nharmon]

Thats funny, because the article doesn't mention anything about creating life accidentally or in a manner than could occur in nature. On the contrary, it mentions that the scientists are "mixing, matching and stacking DNA's chemical components like microscopic Lego blocks in an effort to make biologically based computers, medicines and alternative energy sources."

If anything, this solidifies intelligent design's viability as an alternate theory. After all, this new life was INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED!

Re:Becoming a god

[AKAImBatman]

Or it could be that you didn't read the article, thus you don't realize that this isn't really "From Scratch." In fact, you probably don't realize that the article talks about injecting custom DNA into a pre-existing organism.

The true test of creating new life "from scratch" is still not even close to coming to frutition.

But don't let that stand in the way of a good rant. We all love a good rant. :-)

We build organisms by mutations all the time

[WillAffleckUW]

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...

Re:Becoming a god

[thc69]

Not that I am a big supporter of ID (especially the now common lobbying that it be taught as/instead of science)-- I prefer to believe in evolution, but by your argument, this offers support for ID, not against it.

See, by your logic, this proves that intelligence can brew life from no life...thereby supporting ID.

Tangent: Personally, I've never understood why science and religion must be at odds. Why can't one's deity be the one who caused these scientific laws and phenomena, and either nudged evolution a little bit here and there or maybe just planned it all in the beginning (like writing a program, or planning a chess game ahead) and set it loose?