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US Scientist Creates Artificial Life
Joshocar writes "The sometimes-controversial US scientist Craig Venter has announced that he has created artificial life. Venter stated that it is 'a very important philosophical step in the history of our species ... We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.' In the lab, Venter was able to construct and write genetic code from laboratory chemicals. The next step is to insert this code into a cell, which has already been demonstrated in the past. This ability to write genetic code could result in new ways to combat global warming and new drugs, but it could also lead to new bio-weapons."
... saw that it was a "frist!" poster :(
So what exactly does 'Hello world' look like in DNA?
AGTCA
TCGCT "WORLD"
?
Craig Venter is playing God! How dare he?!
Life can only be created by our Lord.
This is worse than stem cell research!
I'm calling George W. Bush about this tomorrow. Do you think the executive branch could put through to ban the creation of Life except by God? Those activist judges legislating form the bench might call it unconstitutional, but Justice Scalia has our back.
Very Truely Yours,
Bob Dole
--
Write in George W. Bush. Never switch presidents in a war!
We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before.
:) At some point I suspect scientists will realize it's impossible to keep tinkering at things on the gene-by-gene level.
:)
So ok, first 3 steps were:
1. figure out there's such a thing as "genetic code"
2. read genetic code
3. write genetic code
There are two more steps:
4. write some genetic code that results in something sensible
5. write some genetic code that results in something sensible, and that's useful for us
Arguably steps 4 and 5 are the hardest possible steps for us to conquer
We'll see "genetic frameworks" with reusable piece that have well known behavior, and genetical development kits that simulate assemblies' features and behavior much faster than doing full-blown atom-by-atom simulation.
Genetical programming will be born
But, oh damn, forget my wild dreams, back to Earth: let's make some drugs and bio-weapons!
Venter was able to construct and write genetic code from laboratory chemicals. The next step is to insert this code into a cell, which has already been demonstrated in the past.
None of the above is creating "artificial life". DNA is the life created by someone or something else. Inserting a DNA into a cell is not creating "artificial life". The cell is already a life -- it is the life created by someone or something else. He only modifies the life. He didn't create it.
1) He has not announced this. He is expected to annouce it. It's not actually been done yet, according to the article, although Venter is '100% confident'.
...
2) It was not him but his team.
3) His team has not actually created the life form in question, it's just a stripped down copy of an existing life form.
4) His team has only made a copy of the chromosome, the other parts of cellular machinary come from an existing organism.
So the summary should read
Craig Venter is expected to announce that his team has created an artificial copy of a bacterium chomosome. The arficial chromosome, if all goes well, will be installed in a cell, and will take over its machinery, and effectivelly begin living.
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What a pity that one of the first things that we think of when making such a step forward is 'How can we use this to kill our fellow man?'. OK, so global warming and new drugs are also in there, but which one would you bet on will receive the big government funding?
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
So this is open source at it's best ...
He took the source for a bacterium, he forked it, and made a newer, cleaner version. He is about to start testing. His version does not yet actually do anything, but if all goes well it will be a great foundation for new and usefull stuff.
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Patent Pending.
Interesting question. If a genetic sequence is invented and patented by scientist, could a natural mutation in a human being leading to the same sequence lead to patent infringement?
I guess the answer is pending, and so is the patent reform to shape it.
as long as Spielberg doesn't make a movie about it.
The summary's use of the term 'genetic code' actually plays down the enormity of what's written about in TFA. We've been able to assemble 'genetic code' for a long time now - designer oligomers are a very useful tool for researchers, especially with regards to techniques like PCR, which requires a primer to really get started. The accomplishment written about in the article is that a chromosome was constructed. This isn't merely a snippet of code, but hundreds of genes (composed of hundreds of thousands of base pairs), arranged appropriately on the necessary protein structures. When the article says it was painstakingly assembled, I don't doubt it. That kind of synthesis is remarkably difficult, time-consuming and prone to error if careful attention isn't given to every detail.
Also note that this isn't actually synthetic life, just a synthetic genome. The components which translate that genome into a functional organism (i.e. the cell and it's structures) were not created. But this is none the less a great leap forward, and I'm sure the resulting findings and work to come from this will unlock vast possibilities, as well as elucidate some currently unknown processes and problems in molecular biology.
Speaking of possibilities, let's also try not to get too caught up in the nonsense here. This stuff about combating global warming and building drugs and/or bioweapons is just idle speculation, and could be applied to pretty much any kind of molecular biology research. This is just one step, albeit a big one, towards a possible larger goal.
"This ability to write genetic code could result in new ways to combat global warming..."
That's the kind of claim that tells me that he's fishing for funding, nothing more.
Bah, why am I so worried, I'm sure they will keep it safely contained like they have for rice
with the writing of this post!
From just a fast read of the article, I think the claim "creating" a new life is a bit exaggerated.
It's pared down from the genome of a pre-existing species and probably permuted the organisation of the genes on the chromosomes, therefore not much "creation" was involved, they just figured out what genes are not essentially for cell/organism viability and removed them. Granted, a LOT of work had to have been done to stitch together the final artificial chromosome, but still, I think it would be more correct to say it's an artificially _modified_ chromosome rather than created.
Gene therapy labs often play with the HIV virus, by taking out the nasty bits and put in replacement genes, to study whether it is an effective delivery system.
Scientists have difficulty predicting function and structure of known/natural proteins/genes, let alone making new ones. However, gene modification is very common, for example, GFP (green fluorescent protein) is commonly modified to fluoresce other colours. And genome paring is also pretty common, there was a group that removed 5 MB (megabases) from mouse genome and the mice still looked and behaved normally _in_the_lab_, can you claim that they were a new species of mouse?
Last I heard, the Mayo lab (http://www.mayo.caltech.edu/research.html) has created a completely novel gene which produced a protein that folded as they predicted it would. I haven't followed up on the progress since then.
Sure, it took tremendously amount of effort, but it's still exaggeration. An example, perhaps a bit unfair, but it's like saying people who pared down Windows installations by removing non-essential files are "creating" new operating systems.
Wrong hole. Biology fails you.
Craig Ventner, when asked about the risks of 'playing God' in the creation of a new form of microbial life responded
"My colleague Hammie Smith likes to answer: 'We don't play.'"
There's no denying the man has good ideas, and that this one has enormous potential. Unfortunately his egoism seemingly avaricious nature have put off many in the scientific community. Let's hope these factors don't slow this important development.
Every technology has both good and bad applications. Nuclear reactions can provide an almost limitless supply of energy, far beyond what we as a species need for the foreseeable future. It also lets us make massive atomic bombs, and even doomsday weapons that could wipe out all life on Earth. I think we've done a passable job using that technology thus far.
What about electricity itself? Electricity gave us the electric chair and modern mechanized warfare, It also has given us massive advances in medicine and technology.
This discovery will be no different. It furthers our understanding of our entire biology, getting us closer, inch-by-inch, to being able to cure all diseases, bring back extinct organisms, and likely usher in molecular computers and nano-machines that can self-replicate and help us fix the damage we've done to earth. I've no doubt it can also be used to kill all humans. I'm confident that we as a species will have matured enough by the time this technology becomes useful that our imminent demise won't be our top concern.
Already a problem in farming, where unintentional pollination of non-GE crops by GE varieties results in the non-GE farmer losing his/her shirt to lawsuits by Monsanto et al. The "patent reform" we have on hand is completely biased toward the biotech companies. It used to be that the non-GE farmer could claim unintentional pollination as a defense; now the farmer is liable regardless of how the genes got into his/her field. I can only imagine the fallout when we start patenting human genetic sequences. Will people have to buy their children now?
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
"a very important philosophical step" — anybody else wondering how this guy defines 'ethics' ?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I don't know if Venter made the overhyped claim but it will surely come back to bite science. Creationists and other voodoo merchants will surely seize on this as an example of scientists claiming far too much, and use it as ammunition to discredit science in the eyes of their followers (I started by typing "foolowers" but how many people nowadays know what it means when you write [stet] after a happy mistype?).
Nobody can claim to create artificial life until there is a complete self-reproducing unit built from inorganic chemicals from the ground up. I don't know how long it will be before that happens, (diminishing resources may mean it never happens - we may have much more urgent tasks for scientists over the next 50 years or so.) but this isn't it. It looks like it is an important technical advance, but it is on a level with, say, the development of the CNC machine, and the claims in the media are about as accurate as if someone had written "With the development of the CNC workstation, we have created self-reproducing robots in the laboratory.
Pining for the fjords
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft Man 1.0 is too geeky. I'd call him Bob.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
He followed a template from Mycoplasma genitalium . Venter calls his sexy little chimera Mycoplasma laboritorium. I, for one, feel suspicious about our new genital-disease-derived overlords.
IT'S A GIANT PLASMID!!!
WHERE ARE MY BIOCHEM GEEKS???
They just stitched together a giant friggin plasmid, that's it.
If they made a chromosome, great, that would be awesome because no one can do that yet, but it's a plasmid, sure, a fully working one, but still just a loop of DNA.
They educated people writing these articles...
No, we will create deadly killers to end the lawyer menace once and for all. I really mean it.
While it would technically be considered a different species (though perhaps in the same genus as the parent species), I wouldn't consider it artificial life. All they did was repeatedly remove genes and see if the organism was viable. They still have no idea how most of the genes and regulation actually work. Simply modifying an organism doesn't constitute artificial life unless you consider dog breeds or other things we've created by breeding. By the same notion, it's not considered artificial life when a new custom chromosome (called a plasmid) is inserted into a bacteria or eukaryotic cell. It's done all the time and has been since the 80s. All they did was get rid of "extraneous" genes that they don't deem necessary. They're trying to make a designer organism to synthesize/produce compounds. This is one step in achieving that, though it was arguably unnecessary. The hard part is creating genes/proteins to make it do what you actually want. This involves creating a new biochemical pathway (or modifying an existing one), probably creating new enzymes to recognize your intermediates, designing ER and golgi receptors to recognize their finished product and target it for excretion from the cell, creating proper regulation of this pathway, etc, etc. As you can see, it's very complicated. No one has successfully created their own enzyme or protein yet, let alone an entire biochemical pathway of them.
I'd have to say yes. Maybe one day it will be necessary for celebrities to patent their genomes so people don't make unauthorized clones of them for fun and profit.
Anyone else remember sitting in high school bio and learning about MRS GREN (Movement; Respiration; Sensitivity; Growth; Reproduction; Excretion; Nutrition)? By this definition of life, a virus would not be considered.
make: *** No rule to make target 'Godzilla!'. Stop.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Venter is a pretty smart guy. He knows how to stimulate public imagination and raise more capital for more adventures in his lab. By trimming the M. genitalium genome by 20%, has he "created life"? That's a very good question. How about your biomedical friend who knocked out a single yeast gene, thereby altering the expression profile of more than 50% of yeast genes in the new yeast strain (a common occurrence, I assure you). Has your friend created artifical life?
If the announcement is in the form of a conference/symposium, rest assured there is probably some meat to it. As well as a lot of hype. Let us judge the importance of it after seeing what his M. genitalium hack actually achieved.
A small correction to Teancum's reading of the article, the next step would be to create an artificial *prokaryote* or bacteria, not a eukaryote. The goal of eukaryotic life being made in the lab is quite a ways away, since it would require the ability to create a working nucleus/nuclear-pore system for moving mRNA to the rest of the cell, as well as the creation of many membrane bound organelles (mitochodria, chloroplasts -- if it is a plant, endoplasmic reticulum, golgi apparatus, etc) which are functionally important to the cell. The goal of prokaryotic artificial life is much closer as the DNA is translated to mRNA in the cytoplasm, and all processes are conducted without the more sophisticated organelles. In fact, Mycoplasma genitalium, the bacteria used, follows this line of thought, and his new 'species' is called Mycoplasma laboratorium (a very creative name). Other than that, you are right on your points Teancum.
The good news on this goal is that much of the technology needed is available. We can currently create artificially plasma membranes (though the bilayer specific phospholipids found in living cells tend to be mixed into both of the bilayers), and as shown by Ventor, we can create the necessary chromosomes. Much remains to do, but we are getting closer.
Unfortunately, our current understanding of protein structure and function as based on the raw DNA code is still lacking, and so any chromosome, including Ventors, would not be original in the genetic coding, but would rather be a spliced together collection of genes that we know the function of (I believe his goal was the minimum necessary genome). To be truly artificial life, it would need to be a base by base creation.
Many people are against this kind of work, out of fears of it harming humans or intermixing with natural bacteria. One solution to this, which can only take place once we have the knowledge to design every protein and base pair of a cell, would be to create a new genetic code. I believe Dr. James Watson (who proved that DNA was the heritable material of all life) proposed a scheme that he thought was the real one (before we actually determined it). I am fairly certain it is in his book "DNA: the Secret of Life" and it is so far off of what we have now, if we gave it to artificial bacteria and it was transferred to other natural bacteria, they would only see junk in the code. It might even prevent the bacteria from becoming virulent to humans, but this might not be guaranteed.
We are made wise not by the collection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. -George Bernard Shaw
Mod up someone who knows what they're talking about? You must be new here...
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One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.
The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest." To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"
But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."
The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
......genetic programming will do the same.......
So if humans do genetic programming, it's obviously designed. Otherwise it's random, mindless mutations, that just somehow happened over the course of billions of years. What useful code for computers has ever come about by any other means beside a human mind? So now human minds contemplate writing genetic code, yet those same human minds try to make themselves and the rest of us believe that the original genetic code did not originate in someone's mind, God's mind. Indeed, God expressing Himself through the Apostle Paul gives us His assessment in Chapter 1 of the Letter to the Romans:
"But they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools"
In other news:
Along with the "Creation of Life" some other patents were issued recently for "Cold Fusion", "Anti-Gravity" and a "Time-Travel" device dubbed "Stargate". Patents are also pending for "Eternal Youth" and "Perpetual Motion".
All theory is gray
Soviet Russia? Is that you?
And if they created something like DNA, we'd hear that they didn't create the proteins from scratch. If they created proteins, we'd here that they didn't create the still more basic building blocks, down to matter itself. Then we'd hear that they didn't create the universe, or the physical constants by which existence is possible, or whatever. No, I'm not saying that he created artificial life. But I've heard the "and God said, 'get your own dirt'" joke before, and as funny as it was at the time, I don't really like the smug we're-smarter-than-those scientists mentality I see behind it. When anti-intellectual populism shows its value in antibiotic research or in any other field of science, I may respect it more. Until then, I'm down with the science.