Posted on 09/05/2009 6:50:30 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
What Will Artificial Life Demonstrate?
The production of artificial life is supposedly just around the corner. But ever since the famous 1953 Miller and Urey experiment failed to spark life in the laboratory just from chemicals, that corner has proven painstakingly long to get around.
In August, biologist Craig Venter of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Maryland was reported as predicting that artificial life is just months away. His team had cloned, added to, and modified the DNA of a “simple” bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides (a prokaryote).
The complex procedure they used involved taking plasmid sequences from yeast (eukaryote) and adding them to the Mycoplasma chromosome. This engineered chromosome was swapped for the yeast genome, making a reproducing, yeast-like bacterium. This series of steps promises to expedite the transfer of an artificially synthesized genome into a cell. Researcher Sanjay Vashee said that his team had achieved “a major advance in our effort to create a synthetic cell.[1]
A number of questions, however, leave wide room to doubt that Venter’s artificial life will be anything more than a substance that has been intelligently engineered. Will his particular incarnation qualify as artificial life among his colleagues? Team member Hamilton Smith said “a synthetic genome” will be made, but how synthetic will it be? How “natural”—i.e., dependent on mere laws of chemistry and not on engineering—would the genome assembly be? Who would decide how each gene would be specified and where it would be placed in the genome? Where would the enzymes come from to build the genome?
“Assuming we don’t make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year,” Venter said.[1] But all his team will have done is copy, disassemble, and then reassemble the components of already existing created life.
If and when Venter’s team creates artificial life, it will only have been a product of purpose and applied power and intelligence. And its life-likeness will have been almost entirely copied from pre-existing life in bacterial cells.
It will, however, stand as an incredible technical achievement that illustrates the creativity and diligence that are part of the “image of God” in humans, as well as the extremely precise engineering involved in even the very smallest of God’s living creations.
References
* Mr. Sherwin is Senior Science Lecturer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on September 4, 2009.
Ping!
That man isn't really God after all?
LOL :o)
Does that come with a warranty?
I don’t know.. Just as long there is no urge to kill humanity in the AI...
Bioshock - Ventner needs to buy some plasmids from the vending machines ...
My thought exactly ... Congress, Executive and Supreme Court!
This always happens with artificial life. Will someone please go wind her back up?
Would that be like making an authentic replica?
At that point he has planned for a long time to just start inserting viral genes and see what they do.
The ocean may well have BILLIONS of different kinds of genes ~ possibly even the design specs for intergalactic space cruisers ~ although initial ambitions are more modest!
A scientist challenges God: “I can do anything you can do! I can produce massive explosions and harness the energy! I can travel the universe, and I can make anything you can!”
“Well,” says God, “can you make a human being out of nothing but sand?”
“Why yes I can,” the scientist says, and bends down to pick up a handful of sand.
“Wait a minute,” says God, “Go get your own sand.”
I don’t think it will ever happen, unless perhaps they synthesize it from already living organisms. I once new an evo-atheist in my local Republican Party who actually looked forward to the day when we could grow bodies without brains to harvest their organs. He was one very sick dude. I can’t imagine science not informed by Judeo-Christian morality.
They may name the name of Republican, but they sure aren't conservative.
That is just so twisted.
:o)
I’ll wait til it crawls out of a flask, then it’s alive.
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