Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith, the two American biologists who unravelled the first DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium) in 1995, have made a bacterium that has an artificial genome””creating a living creature with no ancestor… Pedants may quibble that only the DNA of the new beast was actually manufactured in a laboratory; the researchers had to use the shell of an existing bug to get that DNA to do its stuff. Nevertheless, a Rubicon has been crossed. It is now possible to conceive of a world in which new bacteria (and eventually, new animals and plants) are designed on a computer and then grown to order.
That ability would prove mankind’s mastery over nature in a way more profound than even the detonation of the first atomic bomb. The bomb, however justified in the context of the second world war, was purely destructive. Biology is about nurturing and growth. Synthetic biology, as the technology that this and myriad less eye-catching advances are ushering in has been dubbed, promises much. In the short term it promises better drugs, less thirsty crops (see article), greener fuels and even a rejuvenated chemical industry. In the longer term who knows what marvels could be designed and grown?
On the face of it, then, artificial life looks like a wonderful thing. Yet that is not how many will view the announcement. For them, a better word than “creation” is “tampering”. Have scientists got too big for their boots? Will their hubris bring Nemesis in due course? What horrors will come creeping out of the flask on the laboratory bench?
It is not merely pedantic to say that they have not succeeded in creating “artificial” life. They have created DNA with specific purine and pyrimidine sequences, which they’ve placed into denucleated cells. The claim that life has been “created” is meant to sell newspapers and magazines, like [i]The Economist[/i] (excellent magazine though it be).
Nonetheless, a Rubicon has indeed been crossed, and whether human beings a possessed of the morality rightly to use this technology is the big question. Frankly, I’m pessimistic.
“Pedants may quibble that only the DNA of the new beast was actually manufactured in a laboratory; the researchers had to use the shell of an existing bug to get that DNA to do its stuff.”
As the old joke goes, when they proposed to do this and reached for a handful of dirt, God said, “Wait a minute. Make your own dirt.”
This is not artificial life. This is the construction of pre-existing into a “new” form. Rather like iron ore into steel girders.
“creating a living creature with no ancestor… ”
Ummm, no. They inserted a synthetic strand of DNA into a living bacterium. DNA isn’t alive. The bacterium (a cell) is alive. Until they have learned how to create a cell, they haven’t made any “artificial life”. And, whilst this might be a neat step in genetic engineering, it hasn’t got them any closer to “creating life”.
It will probably find a use in new biological weapons…