Florida Lab Gets Pregnant

Synthetic Biology, a relatively new field, is seeking to find out what happened to a bunch of chemicals to make them capable of supporting a metabolism, replicating, and evolution. A Florida lab is showing some of the most promising advancements in this direction with their AEGIS (Artificially Expanded Genetic Information System) experiment. "AEGIS is not self-sustaining, at least not yet, and with 12 DNA building blocks -- as opposed to the usual four -- there's little chance it will be confused with natural life. Still, Benner is encouraged by the results. 'It's evolving. It's doing what we designed it to do,' said Benner, a biochemist with the Gainesville, Fla.-based Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution. In addition to providing an example of how alien life might be cobbled together, synthetic biology has a broad array of uses on the home front."

Comments

Um, guys....

[Itninja]

'It's evolving. It's doing what we designed it to do,'

Isn't that statement eating itself?

Re:Sounds like Intelligent Design

[The End Of Days]

Only if you're trying to make the argument that humans guided the evolution of humans. It's about as logical an argument as I've ever heard from the ID crowd, but it's still pretty stupid.

Re:Not my fault

[DigiShaman]

If she's between 25 and 30, she lied to you. Beware if the biological clock my friend, beware!

Re:Sounds like Intelligent Design

[MightyMartian]

No more than breeding cows or strains of wheat is an argument for ID.

Re:Sounds like Intelligent Design

[MightyMartian]

Evolution is simply put " change in the frequency of the genetic makeup of a population over time". How is this not evolution?

Methinks you've spent so much time trying to justify your Creationist tendencies by calling scientists "elitists" that you actually have no idea what they're talking about.

Re:grey goo

[whong09]

You realize that microbes already in nature have been evolving the moment they've showed up?
Any sort of creation we make in the lab right now will ultimately be weaker than any successful microbe.

Green goos already exist, they cause common colds.

Grey goo and hubris

[TapeCutter]

Why do ludites (not accusing you) think artifical nanotech would NOT be eaten by the natural nanotech found around and within us? The people who think scientists can build such a machine are the ones who are guilty of hubris, not the scientists.

Re:Grey goo and hubris

[marcosdumay]

Because artificial machines may be able to deal with a much wider set of chemical reactions than we can. Also because they are inteligently designed and, thus, can be way better optimized than we are.

I'm not very concerned about it destroying the humanity, but I can see how grey goo may disrupt other species.

Re:Grey goo and hubris

[TapeCutter]

I didn't say we can't disrupt nature, we have already done that with the closest thing we have to grey-goo, ie: pollution. My point is that nature will disrupt grey-goo no matter how intellegent or efficient it's design. In fact most, if not all, of said designs will be inspired by observing their natural conterparts.

Re:World domination

[imhennessy]

To quote Dr. Ian Malcom: "Life. Finds. A. Way."

It was almost like Jeff Goldblum was channeling Shatner, but acting him as more human than he was when not acting.

ivan