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The Los Alamos Bug

Kannappan writes "'You somehow have to forget everything you know about life', says Steen Rasmussen, a colleague of Norman Packard. Packard and his team are working on creating life artificially, nicknamed The Los Alamos bug (pdf). It will be created out of a molecule called Peptide Nucleic Acid(PNA), with a blend of three different factors crucial to life, viz. containment, heredity and metabolism. The researchers believe that the synthetic lives so created will have an enormous practical value in producing clean fuels, healing injured bodies and acting as tiny diagnosticians roaming our bodies."

4 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Great name - making a movie? by BigSlowTarget · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Great name - sounds like something out of a movie based on a video game. 'Outraged at the price of new labcoats Dr. Such and Such loosed the Los Alamos Bug to destroy the world.'

    Hmm and Doom came out this weekend - coincidence?

    1. Re:Great name - making a movie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Okay drifting off topic (sorry (not really)).

      Was the Doom movie any good?

  2. This is God Posting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You're on my turf now, science boy. Please stop playing me or there will be....trouble.

    Yours sincerely

    God

    PS Yes I post on Slashdot, quite frequently actually

    PPS I really don't like being called "Anonymous Coward". Of course with my omnipotence I could have changed it to anything I liked, but I could forsee a molten pile of slashodot servers if I messed with this flimsy database structure you call home, and something that resembles a burnt out Taco shell (commander variety) as a side effect.

    PPPS Don't even think of modding this as "off topic". I know who you are and where you live, and I don't even work for the Government.

  3. God's Job Application by aepervius · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Name : God
    Age : Infinite
    Adress : Cosmos
    Contact : Just pray. Maybe I'll hear, who knows.


    What were your prior job :
    I did the "Let the light be" stuff but later Adam outsourced me for the light bulb, and replaced the imperative-tense with the switch.

    Then I used to create life but lately the same Adam started to do its on its own and now I am out of job.

    What are your competance : Well I can still do the plague thingy at parties. Or do apocalypse stuff on a 3*8 basis. How do you see your future : Plumbery seems good. Or electricity. Something you can't outsource and that damn Adam will need me for.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org