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Synthetic
life 'advance' reported
BBC | Jan. 25, 2008
An important step has been
taken in the quest to create a synthetic lifeform.
A US team reports in Science
magazine how it built the entire DNA code of a common bacterium in
the laboratory using blocks of genetic material.
The group hopes eventually to use
engineered genomes to make organisms that can produce clean fuels
and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Publication of the research gives
others the chance to scrutinise it. Some have ethical concerns.
These critics have been calling
for several years now for a debate on the risks of creating
"artificial life" in a test tube.
But Dr Hamilton Smith, who was
part of the Science study, said the team regarded its lab-made
genome - a laboratory copy of the DNA used by the bacterium
Mycoplasma genitalium - as a step towards synthetic, rather than
artificial, life.
Full article
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