The creation of synthetic life

[Banquo's Ghost]

I was rather astonished to wake up and find that our little band had not addressed one of the most momentous events of our, or any lifetime, announced yesterday: The creation of synthetic life.

TO CREATE life is the prerogative of gods. Deep in the human psyche, whatever the rational pleadings of physics and chemistry, there exists a sense that biology is different, is more than just the sum of atoms moving about and reacting with one another, is somehow infused with a divine spark, a vital essence. It may come as a shock, then, that mere mortals have now made artificial life.

This has such profound moral and philosophical impacts that my head is spinning with both marvel and concern.

What do we think those impacts will be?
Is regulation appropriate or indeed viable, and what boundaries should it seek to enforce?
At present, one individual and hist trust "owns" this technology - how does the world approach that?
For those who believe in a Creator God, what challenges does Creator Man have for that faith?
Bio-labs are impossible to deny to most nations of any technological standing. They are much less visible to concerned international bodies. How then will it be possible to stop rogue nations (or indeed, rogue groups) cooking up weapons of mass destruction that make nuclear pale into insignificance?
A personal thought provoked by one of the uses proposed, that of carbon dioxide eating bacteria, engineered to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and secrete bio-fuels. Great idea, but what happens if they get out of (say) BP's vats and start metabolising the air in your lungs into crude oil?

I am dizzy with the excitement of such an incredible piece of science, and the implications of having life created by human beings.

[Kadagar_AV]

There is only one creator, and that is God! Would I see the responsible scientist I would throw rocks at him, from my cave. Then I would put my hands to my ears and go "la la la la la" so as to not hear of such blasphemy.

Just joking, I of course welcome this breakthrough.

However, we are not quite there yet, I am afraid you fell for the media hype.

The bacteria in question is "from nature" whereas the DNA is artificial... Or basically, the hardware is still all nature, but we were able to change the software. So no, we are not quite there yet, sad to say. When we can also create synthetic bacteria, that is when we have created life.

[Husar]

A personal thought provoked by one of the uses proposed, that of carbon dioxide eating bacteria, engineered to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and secrete bio-fuels. Great idea, but what happens if they get out of (say) BP's vats and start metabolising the air in your lungs into crude oil?

You create a new bacterium that thinks the oil-pooping ones are a delicacy and inhale it. And then one that eats oil and turns it into oxygen...
And there's an iPhone App for it so you don't even have to go home...

[Subotan]

See, this is intelligent design.

[Vladimir]

I saw this last night on BBCA. They recapped it this morning.

This is more sensation than science; and the science is considerable. Instead of manipulating life on the macro level we're manipulating it on the micro level. The artificially sequenced DNA is injected into an existing bacterium. Therefore, it's not fully synthetic life.

We're not playing God, we're just playing with his toys, again.

The potential for this is amazing. Nano and bio engineering will go a long way to solving many of our problems.

[Kadagar_AV]

I saw this last night on BBCA. They recapped it this morning.

This is more sensation than science; and the science is considerable. Instead of manipulating life on the macro level we're manipulating it on the micro level. The artificially sequenced DNA is injected into an existing bacterium. Therefore, it's not fully synthetic life.

We're not playing God, we're just playing with his toys, again.

The potential for this is amazing. Nano and bio engineering will go a long way to solving many of our problems.

The difference between inserting DNA into bacterium / creating life is about the same as:
Playing with yourself / God approved intercourse.

basically, only half is not enough to create life.

That being said, we still LOVE playing with Gods toys :D





EDIT: I got your point Vlad, was just too good an opportunity not to elaborate ;)

[Pannonian]

I was rather astonished to wake up and find that our little band had not addressed one of the most momentous events of our, or any lifetime, announced yesterday: The creation of synthetic life.

Banquo suffers from Lemur's disease

[Sigurd]

So we have our first frankenstein bachteria... Now let's do a frankenstein fruit fly.

For those who believe in a Creator God, what challenges does Creator Man have for that faith?

That the Mormons were right all along?

[Vladimir]

EDIT: I got your point Vlad, was just too good an opportunity not to elaborate ;)

So, you're saying this is like playing with God's bits?

[Kadagar_AV]

So, you're saying this is like playing with God's bits?

I love God.

[KukriKhan]

It's one more step down the road of "The Irrelevance of Males". Quite soon women will be the biologically-dominant gender, males will be a luxury item, and sex acts mere sporting events.

We testosterone-based life forms ought to start practicing our begging routines right away, and learn how to sweep and mop and cook, and fix our hair to please our masters.

[Kadagar_AV]

It's one more step down the road of "The Irrelevance of Males". Quite soon women will be the biologically-dominant gender, males will be a luxury item, and sex acts mere sporting events.

We testosterone-based life forms ought to start practicing our begging routines right away, and learn how to sweep and mop and cook, and fix our hair to please our masters.

On the contrary my friend.

We can now engineer eggs into robots, and have them give birth. It is the male fantasy come true, we have an expedient way to have sex when we want and as we want without strings attached (or even emotions, just as all we like it).

It will completely change our lifestyle, instead of being at home pleasing the ladies we can all focus on the important things in life, war.

Can you even imagine how many more troops the US would be able to send to Afghanistan with this technology, instead of having spoiled brats at home wasting their time being with the ladies.

[Beskar]

Banquo suffers from Lemur's disease

Nobody loves me.

[Rhyfelwyr]

This is an affront to God's sovereignty. I really do not believe he will stand for this, and I expect Jesus will return soon.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Hold your horses: all they've done is prove that they can create functioning DNA. They still require a living guinea pig to transplant the DNA into before it will be doing their bidding.
And as such it remains to be seen how they will tackle anything bigger than a single-cell organism because there pretty much ends the applicability of the technique (due to the fact determination of the cell already has occurred).

[Beskar]

Hold your horses: all they've done is prove that they can create functioning DNA. They still require a living guinea pig to transplant the DNA into before it will be doing their bidding.
And as such it remains to be seen how they will tackle anything bigger than a single-cell organism because there pretty much ends the applicability of the technique (due to the fact determination of the cell already has occurred).

Do the new cells reproduce? If so, then it is a new life.

[Vladimir]

Do the new cells reproduce? If so, then it is a new life.

Yes.

[Viking]

Since it's not created from scratch, I'll save my champagne for a later occasion.

Though, when we are finally there, I'll use the techonology to take control over humanity, and this is how:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Mind-controlling fungus of course

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Banquo suffers from Lemur's disease

More like proof that we should do away with the science forum.

[Kadagar_AV]

More like proof that we should do away with the science forum.

Make way for the god forum...

[Tellos Athenaios]

Do the new cells reproduce? If so, then it is a new life.

That's irrelevant: DNA is mere payload in cell reproduction, it gets copied around but it doesn't fundamentally *do* anything in the process. The point is that it still requires a cell capable of all this before whole new DNA can be made to work. This means that the cell must fit the DNA to begin with. This means that you can't inject arbitrary DNA either. For instance cow DNA injected in E. Coli bacteria is going to fail; not produce bacteria-sized cows.

By the yardstick of reproduction viruses (including computer versions thereof) can be counted as `life' even though they display a definitive lack of many qualities that determine in (classical) biology whether something is life or not. (Viruses don't eat nor excrete; all they do is pro-create, and to some extent sense.)

[Husar]

But Viruses also alter cells using DNA (or RNA or what it's called) changing them so they produce new viruses, so why can DNA inserted into a cell not change the cell?
My biology is a bit weak, but I thought to some extent the DNA tells the cell how to behave, what to do etc. so if you change the DNA the cell will do different things?

[Tellos Athenaios]

DNA tells the cell how to behave[*]. But cell copying is independent from DNA. The reason is that it simply involves growing the cell until about double its own size, copying the core, splitting the cell in two. DNA only comes into play at the growth & development stage later on which involves the two sister cells develop back into a completely determined & functional cell again, do some more biological processing for the good of the cell/organism.

Which is where viruses come in: they cause the DNA in the cell core to be modified, and trigger copies of the viruses to be made as part of the normal cell operation and also consume the host cell (which provides the viruses with the building material required for the copies). This results in the death of the host cell, and multiple clones of the original viruses are released when the cell is eventually dissolved.

[*] Well up to a certain level, because cell determination is an entirely different mechanism and depends on the surrounding cells: that is identical cells may start to behave differently depending on their relative position to each other; which is how a baby with complex organs (note the plural) can be built from a single fertilized egg-cell. And it is cell-determination which in turn causes some bits of DNA to be used, whereas others are ignored for all purposes but cell copying. So the exact behaviour of a cell in a complex organism depends on cell-determination rather than DNA; DNA is merely a blueprint for a variety of products a cell may create.