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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"
?
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.
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.
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.