Today, in Science, the first artificial cell was born.
Scientists from the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California announced today that they have developed the first synthetic living cell. Though theoretically this cell is the first step in the creation of artificial life, the inventors are focusing their efforts on creating new fuels, effective ways to clean polluted water, and faster vaccine production....
Scientists have moved single genes and chunks of DNA from one species to another before, but Dr. Craig Venter's team met a milestone a few years ago, transplanting an entire natural genome of one bacterium into another and watched the original goat germ turn into a cattle germ.
Later Venter's lab distinguished itself by building a small bacterium's genome with man-made DNA fragments, piece by piece - another milestone.
It was both milestone achievements that, combined, led the team to the 'synthetic cell' disclosed today. The researchers started out by combining two small species of Mycoplasma with a chemically synthesized goat germ genome, and finally transplanted that into a living cell from a different Mycoplasma species.
The team encountered an obstacle here and they eventually had to spell check (!) the DNA fragments of the synthetic genome to make sure there were no errors. The delay in the achievement of their goal was about three months, but finally, they learned the spell checker found a typo in the genetic code!
Once it was fixed, the synthetic DNA and its cytoplasm, having been tagged to distinguish it from the DNA of the natural Mycoplasma, started to produce its own proteins. Those proteins showed no relationship to their synthetic, genetic 'parent,' but instead looked and behaved exactly like the natural Mycoplasma.
Synthetic DNA may cause ethical concerns for some, but Synthia, as she (?) is fondly called by her creators, is getting plenty of praise from companies ready to join the new field of synthetic biology, a combination of chemistry, computer science, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology, to breed industrial life forms that can secrete fuels, vaccines or other saleable products." (WSJ)
Daisy, meet Synthia. Solitary
Do you have a link for this?
Link? LINK?LINK?
If this is what you are talking about, it is 3 years old
http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-rel ... cher/home/ (http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/home/)
May 20, 2010.
Quote from: "stromboli"If this is what you are talking about, it is 3 years old
http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-rel ... cher/home/ (http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/home/)
May 20, 2010.
No! Solitary
Quote from: "PopeyesPappy"Do you have a link for this?
http://inventorspot.com/articles/new_er ... ated_42200 (http://inventorspot.com/articles/new_era_science_synthia_first_synthetic_life_created_42200) Solitary
Quote from: "stromboli"Link? LINK?LINK?
http://inventorspot.com/articles/new_er ... ated_42200 (http://inventorspot.com/articles/new_era_science_synthia_first_synthetic_life_created_42200) Solitary
Thank you. This is a great discovery. Good job.
"See? Intelligence is required to create life!" #-o
Quote from: "Atheon""See? Intelligence is required to create life!" #-o
You can't kill creationism like that, sadly. All you can do is educate the individuals and hope that the preachers and apologists eventually run out of an audience.
Great article, but sadly, horrible comments.
Quote from: "Atheon""See? Intelligence is required to create life!" #-o
Your sarcasm has been noted. Next you're going to say ignorance destroys life. :shock: :-k Hmmm! These support a God belief and a right to life. :shock: :Hangman: Solitary
1. The comments that went with the article were unbelievable, but telling. Thanks to Monsanto and their GM crops, every so-called manipulation of nature is now seen as mad science.
2. This isn't going to change any Creationist minds. See above.
3. When we create new distinct life from the molecular level, the whole process has been tainted and will be viewed with suspicion. Regardless whether or not science can prove abiogenesis through actual manipulation at the cellular or molecular level, it becomes demonic, satanic and against the laws of god.
Next on the 'right to life' agenda...protecting artificial cells from the meddling hands of researchers..
How about starting with a creationist and creating intelligence? Or would that be too much to expect?
Quote from: "Colanth"How about starting with a creationist and creating intelligence? Or would that be too much to expect?
Yes indeed it is to much to ask as god himself made them intentionally ignorant with that whole tree of good, evil and knowledge prohibition thing.
I'm looking forward to a synthetic cell. I wish this was it.
I was very pleased by the synthetic genome a few years ago, made entirely from synthetic DNA. I don't get how this qualifies as a synthetic cell though when all they did was make a new synthetic genome and again insert it into a normal denucleated cell.
It's a synthetic genome instead of a synthetic cell, unless the article got something very important wrong.
This ^
From what I gather from the article the only difference between this and what the Venter Institute did the last time they were in the news is this organism works. It encodes proteins properly. Apparently their first synthetic DNA didn't?
I also want to throw out there that I kind of object to Craig Venter personally getting all the credit for this advancement. It is my understanding that he is semiretired these days. His involvement with this research is limited to a managerial role. These advancements are made by a lot of other very smart people.
This article is from 2010 - which is the old announcement.
Don't expect a paper like WSJ to get the science right, though. Science writers aren't scientists, and most of them have very little knowledge of most of the fields they write about,
I'll second that! Solitary