The Economist - 22 May 2010
- Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith created the first creature without an ancestor although they needed some spare parts from a dead creature to make it work.
- Demonstrate's that life's essence is information.
- Started with the smallest living creature, a genome that lives in genital tracts and just has 485 genes; it is the tiniest known free living bacterium.
- Previously, in 2003, they synthesized a virus that spit out new viruses just as destructive to cells infected with the natural version.
- The new bacterium used this virus model in that they wanted it to multiply and produce more cells.
- Dr. Venter deleted 14 unnecessary genes and added some DNA designed from scratch in a process called watermarking.--when the bacteria grew and multiplied, so did the synthetic DNA--thus, IT WAS ALIVE.
- Dr. Jack Szostak is going to the next step by working on a minimal cell and wants to develop what he sees as life's earliest days might have been like - a self sustaining cycle of chemical reactions that can reproduce itself.
- We are searching for practical control over what life can be made to do.
- The pruning part of biotechnology involve eliminating proclivities that might be useful to a wild organism, but drain its energy from the task at hand.
- Another step is to repeat the trick with algae--which can be used for biofuels and help convert CO2 to Oxygen. Is this our solution to global warming?
- The price for doing it has to come down too.
- We all worry about the bad things that can happen but this is always the case. Software innovation comes with viruses, but are the implications here more existential?
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