With clever chemistry Ham and his team painstakingly stitched myriad tiny blocks of 50 or so letters into fewer small pieces, grew them in the bacterium E. coli, and then turned these many small pieces into a handful of bigger ones – cassettes of genes – until they got two large pieces that could be assembled into the circular genome of the new lifeform.
We had to make and manipulate synthetic DNA on a scale 10 to 20 times bigger than has been accomplished before. But we have now made the circular genome and are currently working on inserting the synthetic DNA into bacteria.
We are holding our breath to see whether one or more microbes among the 100 billion in the test tube “boots up” with a strand of our man-made DNA and reproduces the DNA so a daughter cell starts metabolising and multiplying according to our version of life’s recipe.
In readiness for experiments to transplant a synthetic genome, we have also applied for patents on how to create what we call “Mycoplasma laboratorium”. But I should stress that we have not succeeded in implanting the synthetic genome. Yet.
If our plan succeeds, a new creature will have entered the world, albeit one that relies on an existing organism’s cellular machinery to read its artificial DNA. We have often been asked if this will be a step too far. I always reply that – so far at least – we are only reconstructing a diminished version of what is already out there in nature.
Sounds like intelligent design at work.
Are we creating our own death’s vehicle?
“inserting the synthetic DNA into bacteria.”
Is it just me or is this really, really, really not a good idea? I think I read about a scientist who tried something like this one time…Frankenstein was his name.
Despite the title, Venter isn’t creating life. As an analogy, he’s played with a few lines of a program and hopes the computer will run it. This isn’t the same as building a computer from scratch. We can look at God’s tools and marvel at what He has done; we might even be able to pick up a chisel and clumsily gouge something. But, we still have no idea what 99.9% of the stuff in the workshop even does; much less understand how to make tools.
Aquila, very clever!
Archer, as a software engineer who reads programs containing millions of lines of code, and also a student of biochemistry, I can only say: if only it were as simple as Frankenstein!
The tiniest organism in God’s incredible creation is so stunningly complex that we are nowhere near understanding the intricacies involved in nature’s simplest functions. The article’s sensational tone implies that these scientists are about to release some new organism of their creation on this world. Instead they have painstakingly copied a minute piece of God’s design into an existing organism, and hope that it will actually be replicated. The scientists have to ‘piggyback’ their design on existing simple organisms because even the simplest of the simple are too complex for human replication. The smallest bacterial disease beats the pants off our efforts to fully understand it.
I’ve been inspired by the phenomenal elegance and design in a simple erythrocyte (blood molecule), and have not seen a single human computer program that could match its beauty and complexity.
“we are only reconstructing a diminished version of what is already out there in nature” – re(again) construct (build) ing (present tense).
Nope, creating nothing, but re-arranging the available. HYPE!
We might not yet have made a living cell… yet. But we will; God gave us goos brains and, cuss us, we will use them.
Is it a good idea? Was gunpowder a good idea? Heck, was the *wheel* a good idea? Point is, this stuff will come; we shouldn’t moan about it. Our hearts need to be changed and then it won’t matter what we make.
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
But gene splicing is already commercially available. There is corn which carries genetic material from bacillus thuringensis so that it kills corn borers directly. And there is Roundup Ready Corn, which I have seen. Roundup is an herbicide, but it would ordinarily kill corn as it kills grass and weeds. I use it all the time. But the new corn is genetically altered so that Roundup does not damage it. Venter may be playing to the spotlight, but what he is trying to do is do-able. And that’s the whole point. Is the cell unbelievably complex? A truism. BUt I remember when catching diptheria was the kiss of death. And then what happened? Do you remember when DNA was utterly incomprehensible because it was so complex? Ridiculing his work will not alter this coming reality a jot or a tittle. The head in the sand works well as long as your butt isn’t exposed to the lions. LM
“Creating” the Mona Lisa painting is not the same as photocopying it. Venter is *hoping* to make a facsimile of her right upper lip.
There are incredible parallels between Information Technology and Biochemistry. Our most wonderful software don’t hold a candle to the simplest cell. This is not criticism of Venter’s work (perhaps of his claims). I agree with Matt that science is done a disservice when the media makes outrageous claims calculated to elicit an emotional response rather than to inform.
10 and 11: You are missing my point. Science, over and over, has produced on its promises. The most radical of promises, 10 years ago, is no longer radical. Forty years ago when someone in SciAm said that the computer, which filled a very large room then, would be small enough to be portable and everyone would have one, was thought to be spinning something for sci-fi. Gene splicing IS real, and this technique will lead to gene creation, and it will certainly lead to combining genes from different humans to create a manufactured man. Isn’t this enough to cause one a thrill of fear? This is not hype; science’s record of success is astounding, especially when you think that, e.g., there was almost nothing that could properly be called medicine before the first part of the last century.
And I worry about the people who say,”Don’t get upset. This is merely scare-mouthed journalism.” What we don’t need it to be put back to sleep about the significance of what science has every intention of doing. LM