Md. Scientists Build Bacterial Chromosome

Scientists in Maryland yesterday said they had built from scratch an entire microbial chromosome, a loop of synthetic DNA carrying all the instructions that a simple cell needs to live and reproduce.

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OK, this is just plain scary. Talk about playing God... The plan to completely construct an artificial life form by the end of the year. OK, do they know what this life form is going to do? How this life form is going to react? How quickly might it evolve? How do the know that they are not going to inadvertently create a highly contagious global population killing super bug???

I mean yeah, It's really effing cool that technology has progressed to the point where we can artificially create life in petri dish, but come on, what are the possible ramifications of such things????

Venter's team started by determining the precise order of all 580,076 base pairs, or "letters" of DNA code, inside one of the simplest microbes known to science: Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacterium that can infect the human genital tract. The scientists bought small pieces of DNA, then perfected painstaking methods to stitch them together inside bacteria and yeast cells in exactly the right order.
The final product -- 582,970 base pairs in all -- is a near-exact replica of M. genitalium's genome

OK, So were creating a new STD it looks like

It's a two-edged blade. Promises of healing also mask the potential for designer weapons systems. Clean up an oil spill or digest something else... it's bacterial. The largest chemical synthetic molecules ever accurately and purposely produced for a purpose. DNA 100% synthetic. The assembly process is remarkably simple... practically crowd-sourced... three little contractors assembling little sequences and send them via DNA cassette UPS to JCV and yeast does the rest.

It's described as step two in a three stage process to synthesize life. It doesn't yet replicate (mycoplasma genitalium is tiny and is 485 working genes) but it very well could and soon.

A link to a radio interview on CBC AIH from yesterday... it should open in WMP.

www.cbc.ca...

Cheers,

Vic