Rubaiyats of Lote-Tree

I guess time will tell. It's intriguing though, they could now potentially create a life form that eats dangerous waste and excretes fossil feuls. I've read about it, everyone's pretty excited.

I just read "Oryx and Crake" a couple of weeks ago though, so the whole screwing with genetics thing is honestly freaking me out a bit. You introduce a new species into an ecosystem and there's no telling what might happen, nevermind a species that has never existed before. As we continue to advance in this field, it'll be literally impossible to predict the outcome.

One doesn't have to be religious to realize it could cause all sorts of environmental havoc. There are currently before this all sorts of concerns about altering the normal biodiversity, and now what happens when we add this to the mix? I don't know how I feel about this yet. It could be a means of doing real good and it could be a process that leads to disaster.

edit: Just read Juniper's reply and strangly enough we agree once again.

It's an amazing achievement, synthetic life. Exciting and scary at the same time, and probably one of those moral dilemmas you get around science: just because we can doesn't mean we should. Like Virgil, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm excited because it's an amazing feat, truly amazing and probably Nobel prize winning. But what are the implications of it? Who knows, I guess like Juniper says time will tell.

I just re-read another article on the topic and i think your article is a little misleading Lote. You may call this "synthetic" but it's not synthetic in the sense they created life from scratch. What they did was reformulated DNA from another already living cell. Here: A step to artificial life: Manmade DNA powers cell http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100520/...synthetic_cell.

Here's the key paragraph:

Is it really an artificial life form?

The inventors call it the world's first synthetic cell, although this initial step is more a re-creation of existing life — changing one simple type of bacterium into another — than a built-from-scratch kind.

I really believe screwing around with stuff like this is wrong on so many levels. I can't quite express 'why', I'm not articulate enough to do so. I agree with Juniper, but I also want to expand on her reply. Maybe I'll come back after I think about it a bit. It is rather 'Oryx and Crake'.

I just re-read another article on the topic and i think your article is a little misleading Lote. You may call this "synthetic" but it's not synthetic in the sense they created life from scratch.
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What they done is to study the DNA of an existing cell -in this case a parasite. It only has 500 hundred genes.

Then they turned to a computer and created an analogue of it's genome. They took this genome sequence in the computer's memory and built the genome from laboratory chemicals. They then placed this artificial genome inside an empty cell. And it sparked to life and started to make copies of itself over and over again, each cell containing the new ariticial genome, each containing instructions built inside a computer.

When human's create analogues we term it Synthetic.

DNA is the most crucial part of a cell, without it no life as we know it, so being able create artificial genome is a great achievement for humanity.

Next challenge is to artificially create the shell in which the artificial genome will reside. Then we will have fully Synthetic Life form :-)

I've always had such a scientific brain, that I can't help but be impressed. In some ways I'm appalled at how far science was gone, but then I know I am the type who would keep pushing for my own curiosity. I would always be saying "I've done this. Now, how about this?" Part of the thrill is the unknown, but I agree that it will be interesting to see what happens. I can't help but think that human kind is going to destroy themselves with their desire to master everything.