Artificial life will be born in four months or less. So says J. Craig Venter, entrepreneurial biologist and runner-up in the race to decode the human genome.
“Assuming we don’t make any errors,” says Venter, his team will have created “the first synthetic species” by year’s end. But, if they succeed, will their creation indeed be an artificial life-form?
Venter’s team has skipped over the step of creating an artificial cell, probably because no one has had much success with that so far. Instead Venter’s team took the genome of one bacterium and inserted it into the cell of another bacterium.
Is this truly a new species? First of all, we have the old “species problem” wherein scientists have struggled to figure out what a species is. [See my 3-part series “Case of the Specious Speciations” for a discussion of this issue.] Some scientists think the term species may not apply to bacteria anyway. In January Venter’s team concocted a brand-new bacterial genome, calledMycoplasma genitalium, which they inserted into an existing cell. So far the transfers have failed. Sanjay Vashee, who works for the J. Craig Venter Institute, summed up the situation:
“We have as of yet no conclusive proof that we have obtained M. genitalium cells after its genome has been put into various recipient cells.” Quoted in: Gill, Victoria. “A Step Closer to ‘Synthetic Life’.” BBC News, 20 August 2009. <http://ift.tt/2dqqAwW>
If and when Venter’s team does succeed in transplanting a synthetic genome, they will not have created an artificial life–form.
At best they will have genetically altered an existing form of life.
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The post When Artificial Life Isn’t – Decoding The Human Genome appeared first on Daily Rant Online.
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