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The Wheel of Synthetic Life
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/science.1190719v1.pdf
Did Venter's lab create life? The short answer: NO
As Venter himself says: We've created the first synthetic cell -- we used a recipient cell to boot up the synthetic chromosome." In other words they created a synthetic DNA molecule (as illustrated in the diagram above), almost identical to the previous one but with some hallmark sequences to identify it.
However Venter did play to the media by saying: "It's the first self-replicating cell on the planet that's parent is a computer", referring to the fact that his team converted a cell's genome that existed as data on a computer into a living organism.
Members of the public will be alarmed by their understanding that: Life has been created in the lab and that Frankenstein organisms will escape and endanger our planet.
The experiments by Venter are a technological and scientific milestone but pose no greater danger than other experiments in biology.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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