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A Step Closer to Creating Artificial Life
slick_shoes writes to mention that Italian researcher Giovanni Murtas has taken another step towards creating life in a test tube. "To the untrained eye, the tiny, misshapen, fatty blobs on Giovanni Murtas's microscope slide would not look very impressive. But when the Italian scientist saw their telltale green fluorescent glint he knew he had achieved something remarkable — and taken a vital step towards building a living organism from scratch. The green glow was proof that his fragile creations were capable of making their own proteins, a crucial ability of all living things and vital for carrying out all other aspects of life."
I don't mean to come off as some sort of Chicken Little or something, but I worry sometimes about scientists getting a little careless. Certainly this research is awesome and I'm all for it, but I hope that there is someone in there really giving some thought to keeping these new lifeforms from getting out and killing everything on the Earth. Scientists often have the attitude that what they are working on is awesome and good and poses no danger to anyone. "These life forms can't possibly hurt us, so why contain them?!" So they take them home on their shirts and the things evolve and bad things happen. Again, I don't want to rain on the awesome parade or anything, but I hope that someone in there is giving this some thought and maybe, once they get somewhere, they'll start taking precautions to contain this new life.