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Life In General
15 years ago
...and I mean that in a less metaphysical way than usual.
It was years in the making, but now it's happened at long last:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte.....cience.1190719
For those of you who aren't biochemists, a rather famous chap called Craig Venter made history on May 20th, 2010. His claim to fame - this time, as he's been the first to do a lot of unprecedented things - was creating life.
He put together an entire bacterial genome using inorganic chemicals in a laboratory, and transplanted it into a dead/disassembled cell of another bacterium. The result was the creation the first ever artificial life form (in human history, at the least). One way or another, 20th May 2010 will be remembered as the day the era of so-called 'Synthetic Biology' really began.
There is controversy about this, of course. There are the expected right-wing religious groups bemoaning that man has 'played God'; there are others who feel aggrieved that the mystery of creation is being unraveled by science; there are those whose feelings are stronger, and feel that this is a new, unprecedented sin - worse than Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, now mankind is actively usurping the divine act of creation, the theory goes.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, given the popularity of creationism/intelligent design, mainstream religion's reaction has been either apathetic or supportive; the most widespread view by far is that this isn't fundamentally any difference from a man and a woman conceiving a child - it is part of God's gift that life begets life, and this is simply a special case.
The scientific controversy is deeper, more hostile, and more divisive. There are accusations that Venter's team is simply grandstanding and showing off - it's been theoretically possible to do this sort of thing for a decade or so, and the main reason nobody has is that there's not much point in doing this except publicity. To my mind, at least, this carries a whiff of jealousy to it, though!
A potentially more serious accusation - and one I sympathise strongly with - is that Venter 'cheated'. The genome he synthesised was, basically, a copy of one already found in nature. To bring his microbe to life, he used proteins and cell membranes taken from existing bacteria, too; there is a not unreasonable argument that this isn't so much synthetic as patchwork. The parallels with Frankenstein's Monster are deep and ironic - Victor Frankenstein couldn't create life from scratch, either, and had to stitch his Monster together using reanimated parts from fresh human corpses. This is recycled life, not synthetic life.
What is undoubtedly true, though, is that Venter has shown that Biology has begun to move from a patchwork and theoretical science to a powerful tool - much the same transformation as Physics went through after the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. As little as a decade ago, this would have been science fiction - no longer.
What does the future hold? Who can really say, but Venter - never one to rest on his laurels - is already at work on a far more valuable contribution to humanity, namely the creation of a 'minimal' genome; which, as the name implies, means a genetic sequence of an organism that contains only the genes absolutely essential to life. This 'minimal' organism would then be a basis for any number of artificial microbes; the best analogy is a computer operating system, providing an environment within which smaller programs can operate, a standardised platform that anyone can use. Ironically, this was actually the original aim of his synthetic life project, but the plan was changed part-way through!
There are already plans to produce a 'catalogue' of preassembled parts, like a biological version of the local hardware store, which theoretically anybody could buy and piece together as they chose. A world in which such things are commonplace and accessible is a world that nobody can, for now, envision.
Of course - as I suspect you, dear reader, are already thinking - there will be bad as well as good. To follow the earlier analogy of 20th-century physics, Venter's accomplishment may be akin to Enrico Fermi's prototype atomic pile - by proving that a nuclear chain reaction was possible to initiate and control, Fermi laid the foundations for the atom bomb, first tested only six years later. To follow on from the computer analogy I used after that, how long will it be before a renegade 'biohacker' builds a real virus, not just a software one?
That last is a real danger that critics of the synthetic biologists often use to advocate strict controls (debatable but not unreasonable) or, sadly, an ill-advised outright ban on research into the topic. The trouble with the latter idea is that the genie has already left the bottle; it left over a decade ago when commercial genetic manipulation became a reality. It is already possible for anyone with money and internet access to get the materials and knowledge to build, say, Smallpox, or Polio from scratch; scary, but not news.
Controls to restrict dangerous activity in this field area clearly necessary, but a ban is based on the unsound principle that it will go away if ignored. Criminals will still readily use the technology, as will rogue states like North Korea; the best way to defend against dirty tricks is to try and stay one step ahead.
On an unrelated but more specific point, the Neanderthal genome was sequenced recently. It is entirely possible, using this technique, to build an artificial Neanderthal genome, insert it into a human oocyte (egg), and hence recreate a Neanderthal. Any creature whose genome has been sequenced could be replicated this way - and I doubt it'll be long before the first reborn Mammoths are roaming around somewhere. The day is coming, mark my words.
But that is still the future. For now, though, whatever your thoughts on Venter's work and how much of a mixed blessing you think it is, ponder this a moment:
In a petri dish somewhere out there, there exists something unique - a living cell that didn't come into existence by cell division, an organism that has never had a parent. This has happened before - only once, when the Earth was sterile except for a single cell, the first of its kind, the cell from which all life on Earth evolved.
If this isn't history, then I ask - what is?
It was years in the making, but now it's happened at long last:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte.....cience.1190719
For those of you who aren't biochemists, a rather famous chap called Craig Venter made history on May 20th, 2010. His claim to fame - this time, as he's been the first to do a lot of unprecedented things - was creating life.
He put together an entire bacterial genome using inorganic chemicals in a laboratory, and transplanted it into a dead/disassembled cell of another bacterium. The result was the creation the first ever artificial life form (in human history, at the least). One way or another, 20th May 2010 will be remembered as the day the era of so-called 'Synthetic Biology' really began.
There is controversy about this, of course. There are the expected right-wing religious groups bemoaning that man has 'played God'; there are others who feel aggrieved that the mystery of creation is being unraveled by science; there are those whose feelings are stronger, and feel that this is a new, unprecedented sin - worse than Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge, now mankind is actively usurping the divine act of creation, the theory goes.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, given the popularity of creationism/intelligent design, mainstream religion's reaction has been either apathetic or supportive; the most widespread view by far is that this isn't fundamentally any difference from a man and a woman conceiving a child - it is part of God's gift that life begets life, and this is simply a special case.
The scientific controversy is deeper, more hostile, and more divisive. There are accusations that Venter's team is simply grandstanding and showing off - it's been theoretically possible to do this sort of thing for a decade or so, and the main reason nobody has is that there's not much point in doing this except publicity. To my mind, at least, this carries a whiff of jealousy to it, though!
A potentially more serious accusation - and one I sympathise strongly with - is that Venter 'cheated'. The genome he synthesised was, basically, a copy of one already found in nature. To bring his microbe to life, he used proteins and cell membranes taken from existing bacteria, too; there is a not unreasonable argument that this isn't so much synthetic as patchwork. The parallels with Frankenstein's Monster are deep and ironic - Victor Frankenstein couldn't create life from scratch, either, and had to stitch his Monster together using reanimated parts from fresh human corpses. This is recycled life, not synthetic life.
What is undoubtedly true, though, is that Venter has shown that Biology has begun to move from a patchwork and theoretical science to a powerful tool - much the same transformation as Physics went through after the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. As little as a decade ago, this would have been science fiction - no longer.
What does the future hold? Who can really say, but Venter - never one to rest on his laurels - is already at work on a far more valuable contribution to humanity, namely the creation of a 'minimal' genome; which, as the name implies, means a genetic sequence of an organism that contains only the genes absolutely essential to life. This 'minimal' organism would then be a basis for any number of artificial microbes; the best analogy is a computer operating system, providing an environment within which smaller programs can operate, a standardised platform that anyone can use. Ironically, this was actually the original aim of his synthetic life project, but the plan was changed part-way through!
There are already plans to produce a 'catalogue' of preassembled parts, like a biological version of the local hardware store, which theoretically anybody could buy and piece together as they chose. A world in which such things are commonplace and accessible is a world that nobody can, for now, envision.
Of course - as I suspect you, dear reader, are already thinking - there will be bad as well as good. To follow the earlier analogy of 20th-century physics, Venter's accomplishment may be akin to Enrico Fermi's prototype atomic pile - by proving that a nuclear chain reaction was possible to initiate and control, Fermi laid the foundations for the atom bomb, first tested only six years later. To follow on from the computer analogy I used after that, how long will it be before a renegade 'biohacker' builds a real virus, not just a software one?
That last is a real danger that critics of the synthetic biologists often use to advocate strict controls (debatable but not unreasonable) or, sadly, an ill-advised outright ban on research into the topic. The trouble with the latter idea is that the genie has already left the bottle; it left over a decade ago when commercial genetic manipulation became a reality. It is already possible for anyone with money and internet access to get the materials and knowledge to build, say, Smallpox, or Polio from scratch; scary, but not news.
Controls to restrict dangerous activity in this field area clearly necessary, but a ban is based on the unsound principle that it will go away if ignored. Criminals will still readily use the technology, as will rogue states like North Korea; the best way to defend against dirty tricks is to try and stay one step ahead.
On an unrelated but more specific point, the Neanderthal genome was sequenced recently. It is entirely possible, using this technique, to build an artificial Neanderthal genome, insert it into a human oocyte (egg), and hence recreate a Neanderthal. Any creature whose genome has been sequenced could be replicated this way - and I doubt it'll be long before the first reborn Mammoths are roaming around somewhere. The day is coming, mark my words.
But that is still the future. For now, though, whatever your thoughts on Venter's work and how much of a mixed blessing you think it is, ponder this a moment:
In a petri dish somewhere out there, there exists something unique - a living cell that didn't come into existence by cell division, an organism that has never had a parent. This has happened before - only once, when the Earth was sterile except for a single cell, the first of its kind, the cell from which all life on Earth evolved.
If this isn't history, then I ask - what is?
zennithm
~zennithm
Rawr.
Sovandar
~sovandar
OP
An epic response.
zennithm
~zennithm
I aim to please!
