These are either the scariest words ever written or the announcement of our impending immortality…
"We make a genome from four bottles of chemicals; we put that synthetic genome into a cell; that synthetic genome takes over the cell," said Dr. Gibson. "The cell is entirely controlled by that new genome."
The scientists didn’t give the new organism its own species name, but they did give its synthetic genome an official version number, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0.
To set this novel bacterium—and all its descendants—apart from any natural creation, Dr. Venter and his colleagues wrote their names into its chemical DNA code, along with three apt quotations from James Joyce and others. These genetic watermarks will, eventually, allow the researchers to assert ownership of the cells. "You have to have a way of tracking it," said Stanford ethicist Mildred Cho, who has studied the issues posed by the creation of such organisms.
In case you missed it, scientists working for Craig Venter have created, for the first time, a completely synthetic organism by writing computer code to create the desired gene sequences, made the DNA from the code, and then transplanted the DNA in an empty cell, which was taken over by the DNA.
This is literally a turning point in the relationship between man and nature," said molecular biologist Richard Ebright at Rutgers University, who wasn’t involved in the project. "For the first time, someone has generated an entire artificial cell with predetermined properties.
Read the whole story here and ponder what this means for mankind.
oh silly humans, never ceasing to try to build the Tower of Babel and become their own gods…problem being it never turns out like they think – if people would just grasp the responsibility they would have to accept to be God I don’t think they’d want the job