Life may be the most beautiful thing we have to cherish, but there is still widespread belief that 'life' is some sort of magic. Hopefully this will chip it away a bit.
This morning we awoke to one of the greatest breakthroughs in science. Craig Venter, Genomics pioneer, has synthetically created a living organism from inanimate chemicals. Thats right, we have created life in the lab, many said could not be done as we dont have the power to instill life. The tables have turned. While this opens the door to an array of applications, it still leaves questions such as the sequence of events that led to the evolution of life. But we now know it is no more a question that life can form from basic chemical structures. Now with current insights and technology, it shouldn't be long before deeper questions are answered.
"Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny," said Julian Savulescu, ethics professor at Oxford University
Venter is wisely keeping the exact protocols under wraps so this could not fall into the wrong hands, with the extreme leading to biochemical warfare. There is still so much work to be done from this point. Scientists still are not sure of all the possible applications of synthetic life, but know it is many. You can read the headlines here:
- http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100520/ap_on_sc/us_sci_synthetic_cell
- http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/05/20/scientists.organism.ft/index.html
Venter is also the author of his book A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life, which tells the story of his adventurous life and quest to sequence the Human Genome.
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