Posted on 6/29/2007, 1:50:09 AM by Edward Watson
Scientists could create the first new form of artificial life within months after a landmark breakthrough in which they turned one bacteria into another.
Craig Venter likened the process to 'changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of software'
In a development that has triggered unease and excitement in equal measure, scientists took the whole genetic makeup - or genome - of a bacterial cell and transplanted it into a closely related species.
This then began to grow and multiply in the lab, turning into the first species in the process.
The team that carried out the first “species transplant” says it plans within months to do the same thing with a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Of course it's scary and the claims of "playing God" is constantly leveled against these scientists. However, we've been playing God since we've developed vaccines and dentistry - imagine how miserable our lives would've been without these benefits.
Granted evolution is junk science, there’s no reasonable way to think that a benevolent God would create biting flies, mosquitos, chiggers, ticks, disease organisms, and the sundry creatures of Pandora’s box. More likely is that man or something like man in some past age acquired the power to engineer and re-engineer complex life forms and that the creatures of Pandora’s box are the result. You need to think about stuff like this before jumping into it.
YEC INTREP
It’s like the quickining
To me this doesn’t sound like anyone is “creating” life. It sounds like they’re changing bacterial life from one to another. It is interesting stuff.
The actual creation of life seems to be well out of our reach at this point.
So.....the original man-like creators came from.....where?
But the common cold is still a pain....
The basic system of life i.e. RNA/DNA is clearly the work of a single pair of hands, i.e. God’s. Moreover it is provable that macroevolution is unworkable. Nonetheless evidence suggests that the re-engineering of life forms was a cottage industry of some sort in the recent past of this planet and that more than one pair of hands was involved. God wouldn’t need 100 subtypes of horses and again there is no reasonable way to picture God having created biting flies and ticks.
I figure if we discuss the issue and make sure were not passing boundries that will ultimately undue us in morals and in life...then it will be okay.
Not sure with this. We haven’t discussed this enough.
Ping.
They can save a lot of time and money - there's already a lot of artificial life running around the halls of congress
One word describes this: “Frankenstein.”
I'm more inclined to go along with your original timeline if even that isn't a bit optimistic. There is nothing "basic" about even bacterial life - it is astoundingly complex and we still do not understand when or why a major portion of the existing genome is transcribed, or a very great deal beyond the initial translation. When you place a genome that is known to be working into an infrastructure that is known to be working you're taking a very great deal for granted that you won't be able to when attempting it with a hand-made genome.
You can cheat, and the intial experiments probably will - you can attempt to replicate a known genome by sticking together a sequence of known alleles. That would be quite an achievement in and of itself, but "artificial" life it would not be. IMHO, of course.
"Creating" is not the same as "transforming".
“Nonetheless evidence suggests that the re-engineering of life forms was a cottage industry of some sort in the recent past of this planet and that more than one pair of hands was involved. God wouldn’t need 100 subtypes of horses and again there is no reasonable way to picture God having created biting flies and ticks.”
Oh, yeah, sorry about that. Those are my fault...
If we could speed it up and turn a T-Rex loose in the Senate chamber next week, I’ll give these guys a big contribution. ;)
What has a T-Rex ever done to deserve something like that? Of course, it would be feeding on familiar flesh - dinosaurs.
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