US Scientist Creates Artificial Life 253
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."
Grossly misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Is this the best use we can think of? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Life... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Global Warming??? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the kind of claim that tells me that he's fishing for funding, nothing more.
Re:Grossly misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll be waiting for this call forever. The structure even of a single cell is immensely complex. I mean, we share over 50% DNA with *plants*. Half of our DNA is just the "core OS" for running a live organism. It's not a small thing.
Scientists won't start building cells from scratch, they'll just tweak existing ones more and more while they understand the exact mechanisms completely.
You'll be long dead before we see fully artificial, rebuilt from scratch cells.
I gotta ask you though. What % of code rewrite would you accept on an existing organism, before you call it artificial life.
1%? That amount of changes could turn a monkey into man, or man into monkey.
5%? They could start with a cat, and end with a dolphin.
Name your numbers.
Re:not quite .... (Score:2, Insightful)
The man is a prima donna, prone to exaggerate, self-serving in every way.
And yes, he has merely created some DNA. Routinely done using PCR, etc. He has simply reversed reading techniques to writing techniques. And as pointed out by other posters, he has commandeered the machinery of other cells.
In summary, this is a long, long way from 'creating life'. Take anything Venter says with a (huge) grain of salt and consult others in the field, etc.
The man is simply seeking self-glorification.
Super-Bacteria (Score:4, Insightful)
Bah, why am I so worried, I'm sure they will keep it safely contained like they have for rice [washingtonpost.com]
Re:There are few more steps (Score:2, Insightful)
Playing God? (Score:2, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Grossly misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
So did Netscape or the Mozilla Foundation "create" FireFox 2?
I agree, we haven't reached the point where we can fairly call it "created life". But this one step, more than anything since Pasteur, represents a major step forward. The ability to invoke a breakpoint on a running cell, replace its code with a custom gene sequence, and continue execution, means we can now probe the rest of the cellular machinery with unprecedented efficiency.
The GP's point aside, I think this one step means we'll see a fully artificial cell within a decade or two - Certainly within our lifetimes... Presuming, of course, that the military doesn't create and release (accidentally or deliberately doesn't matter) the "perfect bug" before then.
Re:Quite an Important Question (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
He should patent his wording as well ... (Score:2, Insightful)
CC.
Re:Grossly misleading (Score:1, Insightful)
The cell structure is being used as a factory for bootstrapping an organism from artificial DNA.
Once we're capable of producing cells from scratch, are we then going to start demanding that we create our own atoms from scratch before we pat ourselves on the back for creating artificial lifeforms?
This would only be a hack. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Since I love being pedantic (Score:4, Insightful)
Has someone got a link to a more scientific-oriented explanation? Current details are a bit scarce to me.
Re:Is this the best use we can think of? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I think it goes more like this: "Wow, this has a lot of potential. We can use it for all sorts of things. It's also possible that someone who wants to indiscriminently kill lots of people or hurry along some pet apocalypse might want to use this as a weapon, too, so we'd better understand what it means to approach it that way, the better to be prepared for evidence that that's actually taking place."
But that's not nearly as likely to boost your karma with the idealogical alarmists and kooks that can't grasp the difference between offense and defense, so I can see why you wouldn't present it that way.
Re:This would only be a hack. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have heard of an eventual goal of creating a completely artificial eukaryote by some bio-researchers. The idea here is to try and figure out what the absolute minimum requirements would be necessary in terms of a genetic sequence that would still allow for self-replication. Sort of a biological equivalent of a RISC processor or perhaps even something of a biological equivalent of the Brainf*** programming language. Such an organism would have profound implications and even value in terms of biological research, where you could test different genetic sequences in a simple but known environment that wouldn't be fighting with billions of years of genetic evolution. In "the wild", such a simple organism would also face incredible competition and would likely be killed by nearly everything it would encounter, so mad monsters from a lab experiment would not likely cause many problems... at least with the basic A-life eukaroyte.
I agree that this is something that is decades away from being developed, but things such as writing a genetic sequence is certainly an important step to creating such living things.
An analogy for Slashdotters (Score:2, Insightful)
Some people under-estimate the potential significance by saying that we've been able to insert new genes in organisms for quite some time. That is true, but it misses the point, because for the first time the complete genome (operating system code) can be replaced with a different externally supplied version. That is a very significant and important capability, as it allows you to escape from the constraints of an existing operating system.
However, because it relies on the existing hardware (protein synthesis machinery, metabolic enzymes, etc.), it's not the same as creating a whole new computer system (hardware and software) from scratch. In the beginning, of course a lot of the new genes will just be copies of those from existing genomes. But just like free/open-source software, having complete control of the OS will enable a much faster rate of development of new code.
Complete assembly of ALL of the biomolecular components of a cell from basic non-living building blocks will certainly be another great milestone in biotechnology. But just as with computers, I personally expect advances in biotechnology will occur with much greater speed and diversity by modifying the software (genes) as opposed to the hardware.
mhack
IT'S NOT A CHROMOSOME (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:itslifejimbutnotasweknowit? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:IT'S NOT A CHROMOSOME (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also not really "artificial life" (as has been pointed out by many others).
It is pure Venter - a good idea - more from an engineering standpoint than pure science, but important nonetheless, hyped to the max, poorly explained by a "journalist".
alternative headline: "Venter hacks mycoplasma" (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Grossly misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
Please stop lying. You will not falsify the theory of evolution by wrongly attributing the process of abiogenesis to it. You will also not falsify any biological concepts by making a gross misstatement of an abiogenesis hypothesis.