Craig Venter and his team of scientists recently announced that they had created the first "synthetic cell" -- a bacterium controlled by genetic material that they had designed on a computer and concocted from four bottles of chemicals. This is the closest thing to creating life that has happened outside of a science-fiction movie. If it doesn't fire your imagination, then you should fire your imagination.
Basically, what Venter et al did was remove the "brain" (the genetic material that runs the cell) from one species of bacteria (Mycoplasma capricolum) and inserted a new brain -- one synthetically created based very closely on the known genetic makeup of a second species of bacteria (Mycoplasma mycoides). The new organism then divided just as a normal cell would and followed the instructions of the new brain. Think micro-Avatar, except that the Avatar's body morphs into one designed by its new brain.
Experts and non-experts are debating the implications. Did Venter and his teamcreate new life? Yes and no. On the one hand, as Venter said, "This is the first
One can imagine all sorts of wonderful possible uses for this technology. Organisms could be programmed to make stuff -- for example, to create eco-friendly bio-fuels that reduce or even eliminate our dependence on eco-destructive fuels. Exxon expects to invest more than $600 million dollars to work with Synthetic Genomics Inc. -- the company co-founded by Venter -- to develop algae that can turn sunlight and carbon dioxide into energy. Bacteria could be designed and programmed to produce antiviral vaccines more rapidly than with our current method, which took almost six months to make last year's H1N1 vaccine. And medical researchers might be able to develop new treatments by using this technology to study disease. Imagine tinkering with the genes of a nerve cell from a patient with Alzheimer's to try to make the cell normal.
Ah, tinkering with genes. That gives a lot of people the heebie jeebies. Are we smart enough to fiddle around with genomes? What will be the unintended consequences? Will we accidentally -- or intentionally -- create some new kind of bug that will wreak havoc? Will bioterrorists get hold of this technology? Once scientists become nimble at synthesizing the human genome -- about 6,000 times larger than that of Mycoplasma mycoides -- will they use that technology wisely? Who decides how and when the technology should be employed? And how can those decisions be enforced?
Venter is keenly aware of the potential for harm and told me last week that he has been working with experts, ethicists, and the government to help develop ethical and regulatory standards. The last paragraph of the May 20th Science article reporting the breakthrough states, "We have been driving the ethical discussion concerning synthetic life from the earliest stages of this work. As synthetic genomic applications expand, we anticipate that this work will continue to raise philosophical issues that have broad societal and ethical implications. We encourage the continued discourse."
I hope that the continued discourse includes the patent issues surrounding genetic blueprints -- either dreamed up or based on a pre-existing organism. Strategist David Bollier has written extensively on the issue of the loss of "the commons" -- entities that humanity has shared over the centuries such as the spice tumeric, neem seeds and DNA that have been claimed as private property by corporations." Twenty percent of all human genes have already been patented. Though a federal court in New York recently ruled that genes may not be patented, Myriad Corporation had already patented DNA related to human genes that cause breast and ovarian cancer, thus in effect cornering the market for BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 testing for those diseases.
Here's my take. This is an absolutely stunning milestone in a decades-old incremental path towards trying to understand what makes us -- and other living creatures -- tick. Nobody knows where it will all lead. You can bet your bottom dollar that not all of it will be good but that's been true of just about every human advance. My vote is for an open discussion of the issues by people from all walks of life -- especially people with no financial interest in the outcome of the discussion. If we're going to make the right choices, we need common sense and sound ethics as much as we need scientific brilliance.
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Life is the electro-magnetic, and sub-electro-magnetic, interactions that control those molecules and chemical interactions.
the laymans example of this is a wet seed that chemically breaks down at 1C over time, germinates at 25C, or breaks down at 50C
the only difference is in the middle examples electrical field creation by hydrolysis
BTW - F HP and their censoring comments, you su ck and lose valuable comments
Chop Chop!
Riiight. Because that's worked sooo well with all the other questionable technologies that have been developed while everyone SWEARS up and down about how responsible they'll be with it. You know, like traffic cameras, airport scanners, oil drilling, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, biological weapons, torture, phone taps, data-mining and info-capture software that now pervades the data-sphere, etc.,etc.,etc..
Sure, we can trust them. This time it'll be different. Just like all the other times...
The thing is, many of the technologies required for the things you cite have yielded positive things for us too. So, yes, maybe it won't be different and we'll have to take the bad to get some of the good.
Or we could just focus on the negatives and invent all manner of doomsday scenarios. More than a few commenting here are in overdrive on that front.
Deep Horizon is an oil drilling "accident" that no one foresaw.
What do you suppose the results will be when there is an equal "accident" with genetic engineering that no one foresaw?
But we'll still all act "shocked" when it happens.
And it will happen of course.
>>> The one question to ask an alien race = "How did you do it?" "How did you survive your technological adolescence without destroying yourselves?"
1. They would either be lacking in, or have an ability to suppress their hubris and greed.
2. Enough of them were smart enough to get the hell off the homeworld before it's destruction to ensure the species' survival, and then learned from the ensuing genocide.
Sadly, at this point, I honestly don't see us doing either. If we would just establish ourselves off-world in even one or two other places, our species has the potential to be effectively immortal. We'd be too spread out to kill all at once.
As it is, we have all of humanity in one big Earth basket. The worst part of it all? We've apparently decided to die wallowing in our own s**t.
All the easily accessible resources and energy sources that a civilization following us might use have been mined out, or stripped away. If we fall now, we fall forever.
And every single empire or civilization humanity has built has fallen. It shouldn't be something we just sit around and hope doesn't happen to us. It will. And it should be a contingency that is carefully planned for. But that brings us back to my first two points...
The three main issues of this century:
1. Our abuse and overuse of our environment may destroy us. This is true for the first time in human history.
2. We have developed the tools of our own extinction, but we haven't learned how to live with each other in reasonable peace.
3. We are only one big, flying rock away from extinction.
Note that all three issues could lead to our extinction. Two of the three are self-induced, and are plausible problems for the first time in human history (within the last hundred years, and getting worse, daily).
All three would be mitigated by development of a viable, self-sustaining colony off earth.
If you want a reason and a goal for a space program, including human spaceflight, go no further! I applaud the Augustine Commission for taking a brave position in their review of our space program, and making a very brave decision to ditch more grandiose races to the moon, just to race to the moon (Rah! Rah! Beat the Chinese!), using old technology.
However, I sincerely wish that the thinking about why we need a space program at all were better articulated. We need to understand why we need to go there, and plan accordingly.
I was tricked in to reading a little bit and it was enuff for me. I think alot of people really believe that "Spaceship Jesus" stuff.
Heck, maybe that's why all the rush to get all the oil.
In any event, it's great evangelical propaganda...if you like that sort of thing
Suspected in all sorts of ecological disorders already, like hive collapse among the bees and maybe that bat fungus they "just don't know where it came from".
If bees can't pollinate plants...that's pretty much the end of life as we know it.
Scientists are spooky people, they never consider the consequences, they
re just curious.
a friend of mine's father invented the trans-fat stuff that keeps the french fries crisp and your arteries clog up real fast. i guess that's why they cal lit "fast food".
Thus by exploring synthetic life we have much to gain and much to lose. But ever since man first learned to play with fire, it's been that way. Fire can keep one from freezing to death or burn one to a crisp. But are we going to do away with fire or even those nasty old cars that kill 40,000 folks a year in this country? So when it comes to synthetic life, man will, even if not right away, eventually move ahead full bore, just as with everything else he comes upon, accepting the fact that nature's law of balance will exact a stiff price to offset the benefits. Balance, baby!
we also have scientists, social researches and mathematicians capable of measuring and predicting and asking questions about consequeces of use of inventions.
the other tool, is governmental regulation.
The method he used has been around for long, the only achievement there is the length of the DNA actually synthesized.
He copied the synthesized genome from a bacteria. It's like comparing plagiarizing with creating a novel. Instead of copying a few sentences or a chapter, he copied the book.
There are a tons of parts of DNA which role and interactions is not understood. We are not closer to frankenstein that we were before Venter's announcement
This is Ayn Rand's Utopia and all the toddlers get to run with knives.
Pull my finger.
Great line, sir!
Personally I find this story absolutely terrifying, powerfully hope-inducing, and I am wildly uncertain about its possible implications.
It is Frankenstein writ tiny; it is the first sentence of the Brave New World; it is also "Fiat lux."
Venter has been right in the middle of all of this sort of stuff from the very beginning. What I feel I can say with absolute certainty is that we have just taken a big step towards something that we cannot possibly understand.
Just curious what your reasoning is.
For example, I recently read a book that deals with the centrality of fire to human development in a new way, and that's a pretty old technology.
I will be over here, believing that you're wrong.