Creating first synthetic life form

The Globe and Mail ^ | 12/19/05 | CAROLYN ABRAHAM

[doc30]

science ping for you.

[Paloma_55]

Ahhhh... to be like God. Then the world will worship me...ME...ME!!!

[highlander_UW]

This is a false claim...there have been Barbie dolls around for a long time and they were an earlier synthetic life form.

[doc30]

Or, in this case, an artificial bacterium...

[ladtx]

Dr. Frankenstein, please call your office.

[DallasMike]

They hope to determine the minimum number of genes required to breathe life into an organism.

Sounds like they're aware of Michael Behe's thoughts on irreducible complexity to me.

[tallhappy]

Dr. Venter, 59, has since shifted his focus from determining the chemical sequences that encode life to trying to design and build it

Actually Venter is still doing a lot of sequencing. He's beeen sampling ocean waters all over the world and doing shotgun sequencing on the bio-organisms found.

[onedoug]

...a microbe made from scratch.

Then we'll find out what happens when life ends too.

Don't hold your breath.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

It would appear that intelligent designers can create life forms.

[showme_the_Glory]

As in inflatable??????

[CzarNicky]

M. genitalium?

I bet this bacterium gets nothing but snickers at microbe cocktail parties.

[Buggman]

The funny part will be when certain persons claim that our ability to design life proves naturalistic evolution.

[Right Wing Professor]

M. genitalium? I bet this bacterium gets nothing but snickers at microbe cocktail parties.

Actually, it gets applause. Or more precisely, the clap.

[Elpasser]

"But the way biology works, you need the organism to make the genome."

Hmmm. Exactly what creationists have been endlessly pointing out.

But of course, intelligent design CAN'T POSSIBLY be science! (sarcasm)

[r9etb]

An interesting article, a key point of which is summed up in this comment:

"So the profound problem is what do you do with this DNA once you get it? How do you turn it into an actual organism? You need the genome to encode and make the organism. "But the way biology works, you need the organism to make the genome."

The point being that DNA is not, in itself, sufficient to the question of how life began: you also need to explain how the rest of the organism -- needed to decode and act on the information in the DNA -- came about. Even at the cellular level we're faced with a "systems" problem that needs to be explained.

[VOA]

Several scientific groups are trying to make genes that do not
exist in nature, in hopes of constructing microbes that
perform useful tasks

Well, if they do make a living entity...I hope they don't make
a mis-step that accidentally makes something that outdoes the 1918 flu.

I'm sort of suprised at the seemingly cavalier attitude
around this project. I hope the work is really being done in
conditions that would totally contain (or auto-destruct) if
they find out "what's the worst that could happen?".

In the late 1980s some scientists hoped to "build" a bacterial pathogen
in hopes of understanding the basis of pathogenesis in an bacterium
or fungus harmful to plants.
That group got an extreme scolding and were shut down.
(unless they went dark doing the work for the guvmint...)

[ASA Vet]

As in inflatable??????

Naw, A silicon based life form would be more realistic.

[Right Wing Professor]

But of course, intelligent design CAN'T POSSIBLY be science! (sarcasm)

My lawn sprinkler proves that natural rain is impossible. In fact, since all human sprinkers are attached to a pipe or hose, this proves rain must be caused by an intelligent being with a large hose, up in the sky.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping The List-O-Links

A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 330 names. See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped. To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit, and How to argue against a scientific theory.