Craig Venter and God

[Rhombus]

http://edge.org/discourse/creation/creation_index.html

 

I'll just leave this here.

 

But really, though, thoughts? Predictions?

[jimmydasaint]

I don't think this is an attempt to create an unknown form of life, because they had the basics of a cell to start with, and then inserted a man-made chromosomal sequence, probably with deletions etc... to prevent it actually infecting anyone. However, it is superb science but too early to worry about multicellular Frankensteins at present. Remember that scientists have to work from an ethical framework and would bring their reputations (and funding) crumbling down around their heads if they tried to alter human genomes with this approach.

 

My bigger fear is of making transgenic chimpanzee embryos with human genes. It all seems so pointless somehow when there is a network of genes operating in a hierarchical manner with each other, e.g. homeotic genes http://www.learner.org/courses/biology/textbook/gendev/gendev_6.html.

[Darkpassenger]

Here is his Video form TED it is a little more detailed.

 

 

 

As far as i am concerned he and his team have created life for scratch and that is an enormous breakthrough. As far as them implanting the new DNA in to an existing cell it dose not matter its a mute point we can make cells form scratch too it is just simpler and cheaper to use a already existing cell. We are on the verge of a completely new era where people are going to have to deal with theses contradictory philosophical dogmas, if not they well be left behind with the people that still can't except evolution.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Darkpassenger

[CharonY]

So far nobody ever managed to create a working synthetic cell.

[ecoli]

I'm interested in Nassim Taleb's take on the matter: http://www.edge.org/#taleb

 

He's worried that we're creating new levels of unscalable uncertainty by ****ing around with mother nature.

 

Not saying I agree, but I'm sure when the first financier put the first genetic material inside of a naive complex derivative, everyone thought that was a cute idea too.

[Variola]

Really this is not creating new life from scratch, this is building from a blueprint. The genome was already known, all Ventor has done is create the entire genome from scratch and make it function.

Don't get me wrong, I am seriously impressed with the techniques they used for building the genome, transfection and the methylation, but any talk of creating new life or playing god is poppycock.

If he had built an entirely new genome, or even part of a new one, and made it function without problems I would be more concerned about the impact. But it is way way off anything like that. The techniques they used, although impressive are time consuming and prone to faults with quality control.

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Good article

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627622.600-special-report-where-next-for-synthetic-life.html

[CharonY]

The funny bit is how much impact it has on news outlet each time he announces that he created artificial life. It is like everyone forgot that he said it last year, too. And if they manage to change something I guess that in 1-2 years it will be there again. I guess the same discussion will be on again (also here).

[Genecks]

If Craig Venter could model something from scratch, create new genes that don't exist in nature, and create new proteins with functions that don't exist in nature, and made it all into a functional multicellular eukaryotic organisms that can reproduce... then yeah, I'd say he's playing God. Until then, I don't think so... But keep in mind, such a possibility as I mentioned is but maybe a few decades away.

 

I could claim that playing God would mean creating a new tree of life. And that tree of life would be separate from the current tree of life. I'm not saying that the trees of life can't cross-over, but I'm saying he needs to make a new tree of life. Now, if he wanted to humour me, he'd make silicon-based organisms. I think that would be one hell of a thing to see: Cross-over between the carbon-based tree of life and a silicon-based tree of life.

[Variola]

The funny bit is how much impact it has on news outlet each time he announces that he created artificial life. It is like everyone forgot that he said it last year, too. And if they manage to change something I guess that in 1-2 years it will be there again. I guess the same discussion will be on again (also here).

 

 

Yep agreed. And he will never be as good at creating life as the masters themselves, the bacteria.

I'd like to see more work on how the 'new' bacteria cope with different growth conditions, how the up or down regulation of genes is comparable and of it exhibits any different growth forms. That, IMO is where we will learn most from.

[CharonY]

Nah, doing something better than what exists already is highly improbable. However if someone would manage to create a living cells by artificially produced components, that alone would be immensely interesting.

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