Craig Venter is the new Charles Darwin.

He's also working on the idea of incorporating synthetic (i.e. not A, G, T, or C) nucleotides into DNA. The new codons could be used to code for synthetic amino acids, meaning you could theoretically create proteins that could not possibly be created by life as we know it so far.

Imagine growing an organism on the moon that gets its energy from solar radiation, it's nutrients from rocks, and spits out hydrocarbons as byproducts.

micronesia

United States24701 Posts

May 22 2010 02:47 GMT

#82

On May 22 2010 11:26 mmp wrote:

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So quick to nuke...

Craig Venter mentioned in his press announcement combating HIV as an objective on the horizon. I'd give it 30-50 years.

I don't think he was banned because of this post... it was from previous accounts.

KwarK

United States42979 Posts

May 22 2010 04:23 GMT

#83

On May 22 2010 10:43 ArKaDo wrote:
Yeah seem very interessant and dangerous.
What is life is NOT a biological question, it's a philosophical one... that's the problem in my point of view.

Seriously, the idea of "improving evolution", and "improving people" is very very scary.

Anyway LOL at the guy saying you actually need to know biology to say this is dangerous : you are morons.
And LOL at the guy saying "improving evolution" is the same as medecine...

Can't you see that it is a dangerous idea just to "improve evolution"; cauz you need to define what you need to improve (need two legs? change dna so that people are not violent? just read Huxley guys...).

PS: when the guy is saying "playing god" he is not referring to god like the christian or islamic god or anything (well maybe he is but that is not the point), he is referring to an entity who is omnipotent: who knows everything and can control everything. That's not the case of humanity and will never be. When you look at the possibilities of synthetic life, you can also (if you have a bit imagination) see all the bad that could come from such technologies.
I will just quote spider man since that's the kind of quote you like you science freek: with great power come great responsabilities.

I thought they had schools in France. :S

iFU.pauline

France1614 Posts

May 22 2010 04:29 GMT

#84

ho man, creating oil would be the worst idea ever.

{CC}StealthBlue

United States41117 Posts

May 22 2010 04:44 GMT

#85

Cool.

madnessman

United States1581 Posts

May 22 2010 04:56 GMT

#86

I wonder how religious organizations are going to react to this. there was a paragraph in the OP about ethics but I thnk this is huge landmark event ethically.

AeroGear

Canada652 Posts

May 22 2010 05:32 GMT

#87

Transferring genetic material from one cell to another is relatively old news, its pretty similar to how cloning works, altough in the case of cloning you'd transfer the nuclei rather than extract it, sequence it and use a PCR to create a copy of it (its pretty old tech).

They arent engineering a new bacteria, its just about being able to copy/paste some already existing genome. Its quite another thing to understand the dynamics of the genes contained in a genome to create a completly new and unexisting organism. They've been studying drosophilia (fruit fly?) genome for decades and they probably havent figured 10% of it.

The_Voidless

United States184 Posts

May 22 2010 05:49 GMT

#88

I guess new things like this always pushes the bounds of ethics and religion but the worst thing to do would be get radical in kill the scientist, like they did the Russian geneticist because they thought they were playing god.

snotboogie

Australia3550 Posts

May 22 2010 05:51 GMT

#89

This is the beginning of SkyNet.

Lord have mercy.

FakeSteve[TPR]

Valhalla18444 Posts

May 22 2010 05:52 GMT

#90

On May 22 2010 08:56 FragKrag wrote:

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If stems cells are volatile, this would be like putting nitroglycerin in a blender

stem cells dont just explode by themselves are u stupid fragkrag

Biochemist

United States1008 Posts

May 22 2010 06:30 GMT

#91

This hardly qualifies as "Synthetic" life. I'll save that description for when we actually start designing and building new proteins from the ground up.

mrproper

Romania93 Posts

May 22 2010 08:11 GMT

#92

On May 22 2010 14:32 AeroGear wrote:
They arent engineering a new bacteria, its just about being able to copy/paste some already existing genome. Its quite another thing to understand the dynamics of the genes contained in a genome to create a completly new and unexisting organism. They've been studying drosophilia (fruit fly?) genome for decades and they probably havent figured 10% of it.

Actually, they are.

They wrote the code from scratch, using a limited number of existing genes to create a brand new genome. Two years ago they just regenerated the genome of a bacteria by artificially building the DNA molecule. Now they created a new DNA sequence (new species) using software.

Intelligently Designed life exists :D

Badjas

Netherlands2038 Posts

May 22 2010 09:02 GMT

#93

On May 22 2010 15:30 Biochemist wrote:
This hardly qualifies as "Synthetic" life. I'll save that description for when we actually start designing and building new proteins from the ground up.

With regards to scientific development this is a very small step on a long road and labeling it synthetic is not quite right. However, this experiment shows that mankind can actually play for god. A cell does not need to get its DNA by replication within a cell. We can create DNA that a cell will use, just fine. This goes against the belief that life is more special than humans can comprehend, so special that the divine must be the source. In this context I think it is quite fine to call the result of this experiment 'synthetic life'.

gyth

657 Posts

May 22 2010 09:45 GMT

#94

A lot of scientists don't even believe HIV exists. AIDS is hardly understood.

Even the ones who don't agree HIV is the only thing going on with AIDS, still agree HIV exists.

Imagine growing an organism on the moon that gets its energy from solar radiation, it's nutrients from rocks, and spits out hydrocarbons as byproducts.

Are you suggesting that they would be able to transmute something that isn't hydrogen/carbon/oxygen into something that is?

Kashmir

New Zealand178 Posts

May 22 2010 10:18 GMT

#95

On May 22 2010 02:43 buhhy wrote:

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But if you get a synthetic body part, Blizzard will claim ownership of it. :/

Zing!

sKylo

Germany6 Posts

May 22 2010 10:25 GMT

#96

This is how the zerg will be created

Klive5ive

United Kingdom6056 Posts

May 22 2010 10:30 GMT

#97

What this is is a small technical step along the road to something that has a lot of potential.
What it definitely is NOT is the creation of synthetic life.
I like Ventor but in this case I feel he's just playing to the media to hype his project and maybe to get his noble prize (which I think he probably deserves). There are no new ethical concerns attached to this particular advancement, the media hype has just re-ignited issues that were already present.

For me a far more impressive step would be if they manage to design a larger strand of DNA and alter a bacteria in an entirely new way to do something useful for mankind.

What they've done is like the equivalent of showing you can store charge in a vacuum tube... until you use that to actually make a computer it's not really a monumental step.