Science team claims synthetic life feat

[Lord Zentei]

Team claims synthetic life feat

By Neil Bowdler
BBC science reporter

Scientists in the US say they have taken a major step towards producing life from scratch in the laboratory.

Dr Craig Venter says in the Science journal that his team successfully transplanted an entire genome from one bacterium cell to another.

He says he hopes eventually to use the technique to create designer microbes, which could produce artificial fuel or help clean up toxic waste.

Dr Venter was a pioneer in mapping the human genome.

Organic tools

The ultimate plan is to throw artificially produced chromosomes, proteins and other building blocks into a primordial soup and watch as a primitive microbe sparks spontaneously into life.

Dr Venter concedes that this may be a long way away, but he says he has taken an important key step towards that goal.

His team, essentially, snatched the body of another life-form and invaded it with a new genetic code.

This, he says, will be a key tool in testing the artificial chromosomes - or DNA - he plans to make.

"What's in this paper is the result of taking a native chromosome from one species," Dr Venter explained.

"That chromosome was transplanted, inserted through the cell walls, the cell membrane of a second species and, after several days of growth and cell division, the original chromosome in the cell disappears and we have cells containing only the transplanted chromosome."

Concerns

But there are those who are worried about what Dr Venter is doing.

Some fear the technology could be used to create biological weapons or simply that something unforeseen may emerge from the laboratory.

Others are concerned that his institute's efforts to patent their research could restrict scientific advances elsewhere.

But Dr Venter says he is doing nothing that other institutes do not already do.

"Over the last several years we have had to develop novel techniques and approaches that have not existed before because this field has not existed before," he said.

"The Venter Institute and the Synthetic Genomics Company are doing what most major institutions do - that is we file patents on these unique techniques."

[Guardsman Bass]

It would be a terrific breakthrough in the abiogenesis field is he does successfully pull off the formation of a primitive microbe, assuming he tries to match early Earth conditions with doing so. Even without, it's still an impressive scientific feat.

[Zixinus]

Let's just hope that it doesn't come to this:

http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/vault151.html

[Fire Fly]

They finally published? Finally, I've been wanting to read their actual work and not just more news clippings.