Posted by
Hemos
on from the or-better-yet-should-we dept.
baglunch writes "There's a story at The Express that says a scientist has figured out how to create artifical bacterium. " I've never really thought it would be that hard to do - articially create a bacteria, but it does make for an interesting debate of whether life was made/created or not.
You will see that baglunch got it badly wrong. All that is being discussed is a plan to create such an organism. While Dr. Ventner is a good scientist, he is also a notorious publicity hound, and what he has is more likely a list of problems that have to be solved before an organism can be created, rather than an actual method for creating such a thing.
As far as higher organisms any time soon, I am VERY doubful. After all, the great breakthrough of mammalian cloning was later shown to have a number of flaws, like the fact that Dolly wasn't actually a true clone because the mitochondrial DNA wasn't duplicated. It's a FAR FAR bigger step to actually making such a creature from scratch.
Personally I think this is a puff piece triggered by the fact that Dr. Ventner likes to see his name in print, and he suckered in a couple of unwitting journalists.
Slashdot Mirror
You will see that baglunch got it badly wrong. All that is being discussed is a plan to create such an organism. While Dr. Ventner is a good scientist, he is also a notorious publicity hound, and what he has is more likely a list of problems that have to be solved before an organism can be created, rather than an actual method for creating such a thing.
As far as higher organisms any time soon, I am VERY doubful. After all, the great breakthrough of mammalian cloning was later shown to have a number of flaws, like the fact that Dolly wasn't actually a true clone because the mitochondrial DNA wasn't duplicated. It's a FAR FAR bigger step to actually making such a creature from scratch.
Personally I think this is a puff piece triggered by the fact that Dr. Ventner likes to see his name in print, and he suckered in a couple of unwitting journalists.