Man-made microbe 'to create endless biofuel' ["God has competition."]

The Telegraph ^ | 6/8/2007 | Roger Highfield

[Old_Time_Religion]

A brilliant british researcher, who was tinkering with bacteria, gave us the drug resistant Staph infection that is all over the place now.

I’m not so sure they need to be actually inventing new microbes.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

That’s nothing. I hear talk about an intelligent designer that’s given us far worse.

[autosellers]

Any synthetic life form will not mutate to survive outside the controlled conditions in the lab. I am looking with great skepticism at this so called synthetic microbe, and I bet the concept will not be reality for at least 10 years. The Arabs are safe for now!

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Yah. I know what you mean. I had the same reservations about Iraq.

[Caipirabob]

Man-made microbe 'to create endless biofuel' ["God has competition."]

God : Competition? Huh. OK, let's have a "competition"...

Just funnin'... : )

[Lorianne]

Patents? You mean he plans to make money on a fuel source? Shameful.

[IslandJeff]

Once we understand DNA well enough to create designer organisms, it’s all over.

I think any benevolent creator would deign "Katrina and the Waves" just a bit spurious. Many of us are reconciled with that horrible anachronistic concept of a Divine Creator, despite (and, usually complimentary of) advances in the human condition.

What's out there isn't all going to be known in our lifetimes. It's wonderful and friggin' HUGE. As a "simple" troglodyte Believer, it's even more wondrous.

DNA is just scattered proteins. What "is" CL?

[aruanan]

Turns out it rapidly multiplies in the gut and then turns the animal into a hydrogen as well as methane puffing machine. And how big would those flames be?

And why not also see if Airwick wanted to make designer E. coli by incorporating genes for making various types of essential oils so that one could have rose or peppermint farts?

[docbnj]

Hey, we’ve got to let humans do jobs that God Himself won’t do.

But seriously, folks, one can’t patent something that has not been “reduced to practice.” That means that you cannot just patent a cool idea. You have to make it work.

[bvw]

IMO, a patent should not be issued until they show a working model.

[shatcher]

It sort of like the joke of the scientist and God are having a contest of creating life from dirt. When the scientist goes to pick up the dirt, God says,"Get your own dirt." Same thing, to compete with God you would need your own elements to fill the periodic table- Carbon, Phosphate, Hydrogen, Sulfur, etc.

For those that want to know how one could make the bug not be able to live outside of the laboratory, the genetic make up could be missing the ability to make one or two amino acids. Unless these amino acids are supplied in the growth medium, the bug could not grow. Also, one would not expect the bug to be able to mutate and become able to make the amino acids because there is no “pressure” to select for this characteristic. When a bacteria becomes resistant to an antibiotic, they are in the presence of the antibiotic and any mutations that occur favoring the survival of the bacteria will take over the population..sort of survival of the fittest on a small scale....micro-evolution, not macro.