All this noise about synthetic life! Maybe I haven't understood it fully, but really as far as I can see it's Genetic Engg. 2.0...the usual genetic engg. taken to a much higher level.
I was quite pleased to see others voicing the similar opinions.....perhaps my understanding is not the problem.
What would qualify as synthetic life is if the whole cell or enough parts of it were synthesised and that started replicating.
Nowadays on the TV one sees shows with live audience....it's become the in thing to loudly applaud everything with a lot of noise. Guest comes in..loud applause (OK) ....guest sits down- loud applause (why? guest achieved the feat of sitting on the couch?)......you get the picture.
This phenomenon of hyperbole has perhaps come into science....is this synthetic life?
4 comments:
its fun to see the media reactions to this. The Times of India (print edition) has a front page headline while the NY Times has it tucked away in the science section. Plus TOI could not resist the sub-headline- 3 Indian American scientists involved!
this is a technology tour de force... but not quite artificial life yet..
interesting blog you have ..
thanks
"this is a technology tour de force"
True and worth all the applause, but not the tag.
Thanks for visiting.
At which point do you cross the line from genetic engineering to new life forms? It all depends on what you want.
The shell is not that important. The important thing is this organism's DNA is very different from every other; it is a new species that never existed before. Its genome was designed by humans on a computer, not by breeding or other external manipulations.
But that is genetic engineering. We already have been artificially changing bits of DNA. Now they have gone one step further. But life is much more....a cell needs other organelles to function independently. They are not just the shell. They are what makes the cell work. A piece of DNA cannot work on its own (that's also why viruses need hosts).
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