Playing God by Claudia Sonea

I think that people has not used enough often the stereotype of mad scientist playing God and the movies have not underlined enough the consequences of such actions. Therefore it comes as no surprise for anyone the recent news about researchers at the Venter Institute in Rockville, Md, that are conducting a plan of developing synthetic life. On Thursday, Craig Venter, the scientist-entrepreneur who founded the institute and jump-started the race to map the human genome, made public the fact that they reached phase too in their experiment of creating synthetic life. Although they did not yet succeed to create life, they got to the point of creating a copy of a man-made genome for a bacterium that contains the complete set of DNA in the chromosomes of a living organism, the instruction set for how an organism works. If they will get through all the obstacles they will have opened the way of future made-to-order organisms that could do things natural organisms don't: plants that take up large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere to slow global warming, microbes that turn grass clippings into fuel, bacteria that eat sugar and produce medicine. Nevertheless, Jim Collins, a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University states that they have not synthesized a brand new life form, while David Magnus, director of Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics underlines the concerns the dangers of creating not only good organisms, but also dangerous ones. The entire matter will be approached as a report in the journal Science. Don't forget to buy it and read more about it. The subject is more than promising although it's nothing new.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20080125/tc_usatoday/researchersastepclosertosyntheticlife;_ylt=Au7HhUAd..vus1wa931llNes0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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