While this is amazing and very scary all at the same time, I don't
quite understand how it is close to "creating artificial life". It
sounds like simple genetic engineering to me. They have the ability to
modify the "code" which a cell runs, maybe even replace it completely,
but they still need the "machine" of a cell to "run" the code. They
didn't create or even design that cell, they just borrowed one which
already exists. Furthermore, their "code" will need to be able to
cause the cell to reproduce into a similar enough cell to also "run"
the same "code" again.

The article doesn't say whether the "code" they wrote will actually
execute to do anything useful in the bacterium.

As I understand it, there are many major obstacles to being able to
write such "code" which does anything useful:

1) DNA codes for proteins, which is how it gets any work done. We
still have great trouble understanding how even some of the simplest
proteins work. We have trouble predicting how they will fold into
their secondary and tertiary structure, and further trouble
determining how that structure will interact with other molecules.

2) Which proteins get produced when and in what kind of cells depends
on gene expression, which is another whole area which we are just
beginning to get some kind of a hold on.

What is really scary here is that someone will write buggy "code"
which ends up producing a deadly organism.

What is also really scary is the attitude toward life which these
scientists display. There is a LOT of hubris in this article. It has a
lot of potential, but they don't even seem to consider that there
might be downsides to this which make the invention of nuclear weapons
look like child's play.

Sean


On Jan 24, 2008 11:18 PM, Apptech <apptech@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> My cousin Matthew forwarded me this reference.
> I was sure that it would just be more of the rubbish that pervades this
> topic but decided to have a quick look to confirm my suppositions.
>
> The not quite smiling face of Craig Venter that heads the article told me
> immediately that this is, after all, the real thing.
> We stand on the bridge at Khazad-d=FBm. The not distant enough drums sound
> their doom-doom call and it's not certain, yet, if Venter is himself the
> Balrog or if he is soon to conjure it from the abyss. As he's one of my
> select group of (anti?-)heroes I can't complain all too much.
>
> If you can't make head nor tail of that wait a few years and it will be t=
he
> only news going :-).
>
>             http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/synthet=
ic_genome?currentPage=3Dall
>
>
>
>
>                 Russell
> --
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