Scientists Make DNA that Creates New Form of Life

What will happen in now that scientists have created for the first time an artificial, living bacteria cell that reproduces on its own? Do you think the first application will be to industry, where it will be put in food? Vaccines? Industrial applications? Sunscreen nanoparticles? Vegetable crops? Farmed fish or animal life?

Where will the first application to industry begin? How quick applications arrive in your area depend upon who's paying for specific industrial applications. Right now it's at the demonstration project stage. It's actually a semi-synthetic microorganism made by inserting DNA that had been synthesized into the nucleus of a living cell stripped of its own DNA. The result is a functioning semi-synthetic life form. How would you feel if your daddy was a computer and your mommy a shell of a cell striped of its DNA? What would you put in the scrapbook of family photos?

Researchers at theJ. Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Maryland, reported today in the journal, Science that for the first time, they made a copy of a bacterium's entire genome and then transplanted it into a related organism, where it functioned normally. Want to study synthetic genomics/synthetic DNA as a career? You can major in it there. Maybe you can be the first to create more new forms of life. using computer techniques.

Synthetic genomics combines methods for the chemical synthesis of DNA with computational techniques to design it. These methods allow scientists and engineers to construct genetic material that would be impossible or impractical to produce using more conventional biotechnological approaches. For example, using synthetic genomics it is possible to design and assemble chromosomes, genes and gene pathways, and even whole genomes.

You can just bet some organization that wants to control science's understanding of nature is going to protest or warn against taking any further steps. But the value of the step to industry will overpower any protests. Now you'll have a contest between science and ethics. Who wins? The guys and gals with the most money to follow.

The idea that life can't be contained wins. People want to survive, and the first step to survival is creating DNA forms that can survive in space until a new planet can be found. But that's the far future. The here and now is how valuable is the product to industry?

Will UC Davis begin its own research projects to demonstrate how to create a new form of life from a computer parent? If you're thinking locally, check out the UC Davis-related article, Vaccine with synthetic DNA said to reverse asthma lung damage. Its ability to reverse lung damage has been demonstrated in experiments with mice at the University of California San Diego and with monkeys at the University of California Davis.

According to the May 21, 2010 Sacramento Bee article, "Manmade DNA in cell creates new form of life," and the Los Angeles Times May 20, 2010 article, Artificially created cell called a scientific feat, researchers yesterday announced that they had inserted a synthesized form of DNA into the nucleus of a living cell.

How they did the experiment was to first strip the living cell of its own DNA, and then put in the synthetic DNA, with the result of obtaining a live, functioning, but semi-synthetic microorganism in their laboratory. But most readers would be interested in something closer in time to home, that Dengue fever, found in the tropics is now hitting more people in the USA. See the Los Angeles Times May 21, 2010 article, Dengue fever now seems to be our disease too.

If you look at most newspaper headlines, the fact that for the first time in history, DNA has been made by humans in a cell that reproduces by itself. The news is that it's the first step toward laboratory creation of artificial life where the parent is a computer. But it's not really the kind of news blasted over the media. Instead, the celebrity-related health issues dominate in today's media.

The goal of the experiment was to show that scientists could synthesize a genome, put it in a stripped-down cell, and have it control a cell. It has been done. Does this sound much like stripping down a car and inserting some life into the shell? What the experiment opens the door to of course is the creation of microbes with specific synthetic properties that are human-made (why do they call it man-made)? Perhaps it parallels woman-made, that is made by giving natural birth?

So is father time competing with mother nature to create synthetic life with specific properties not found in natural life? Looks like it has been done for a basic purpose at least for now--the be of value to industry.

A bacterium cell now has been converted into "the first self-replicating species on earth whose parent is a computer," according to the Sacramento Bee article. It's all about creating artificial life forms. If your father is a computer, and your mother is a stripped-down cell, what do we call you--an improved, synthetic species? Or a product of the mind that created the computer in the first place?

Will this feat of genetic engineering enter in great value to industry into our foods first, then our bodies? At least scientists now have the ability to combine genes, complex biological functions, and genetic engineering. You can read the study in the online journal, Science. Also see the article, "Scientists play God: create first synthetic cell."

Actually, scientists have no intention of playing supernaturally. All they did was to create the first synthetic cell. Now that the synthetic cell is able to reproduce on its own, it's now a real cell. It was done because it's of value to industry. Follow the money. Would it have been done if were not of value to industry, just of value to individuals wanting to eat a better diet? Perhaps not at that price. The method has been developed at a cost of $30 million by the researchers at J. Craig Venter Institute.

If you read about the experiment in the Wall Street Journal, it calls that experimental one-cell organism an open door to manipulate of life on a previously unattainable scale. So is manipulating life more about following the money to be of value to industry than playing supernatural?

For the last two decades, you see genetically engineered plants and animals. The difference here is that now you have made an entire organism capable of reproduction by itself. Scientists have given themselves more power over life. That's the purpose of science, to understand and control nature, with the goal of making sure human life has a loophole of escape to survival when the world and universe reaches the end of its lifespan someday in trillions of years more or less.

The goal of science is to understand nature and do something about it to survive. The last ice age is a good example of survival in the face of challenge and the need to figure out a way to adapt. Ethics comes at a point when the self-replicating synthetic cell eventually becomes a human, recognizes the computer as its parent, and takes over. That's what the science fiction movies usually unfold. Is reality going to be different?

According to experts, scientists have been altering DNA piecemeal for many years, producing genetically engineered plants and animals, but the ability to craft an entire organism offers a new power over life. However, the achievement documented in the journal Science, may stir fears. We have turned the corner on how nature controls humans. Now humans have an open door on learning to control nature. Who's in charge now? And are humans ready yet to control nature, that is are they compassionate and ethical enough?

If genetic engineering is going to move forward, the next step is designer genomes. If ethics is considered, it could mean an end to genetic diseases. But if all diseases are gone, how are doctors and industries, drugs, and the sickness business going to make money? If money is to be lost, then industry will use the next step in genetic engineering to make more drugs in order to make more money or more electromagnetic devices that lead to more diseases to sell more drugs, or maybe not? What do you think will be the open road where industry's goal is to follow the money?

You might check out websites such as the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics. Even though the cell has been shown to the media as a demonstration, a science project, the laboratory technique will be applied to bacteria that have, you guessed it, a commercial potential.