Synthetic life
Synthetic life is artificial life created from non-living (abiotic) substances. It belongs to the discipline of synthetic biology. It is usually distinguished from mechanical life that usually belongs to the discipline of robotics.
Synthetic biochemical life
Synthetic life is artificial life created in vitro from biochemicals and their component materials as opposed to the normally implied in silico when using the broader term "alife".
W. Wayt Gibbs suggests that synthetic life has three major goals: "One, learn about life by building it, rather than by tearing it apart. Two, make genetic engineering worthy of its name--a discipline that continuously improves by standardizing its previous creations and recombining them to make new and more sophisticated systems. And three, stretch the boundaries of life and of machines until the two overlap to yield truly programmable organisms."[1]
Synthetic life experiments attempt to either probe the origins of life, study some of the properties of life, or more ambitiously to recreate life from non-alive (abiotic) substances. An example of synthetic life might be an attempt to create self-replicating, self-perpetuating (autocatalytic) chemical reactions to simulate possible origins for life. Researchers involved feel that the creation of true synthetic biochemical life is relatively close and cheap, and perhaps easier than the effort needed to place man on the Moon.[2]
One way to create a new organism is to just replace the genome in an existing, natural cell with a different genome created by gene synthesis. This was first achieved with the creation of Synthia in 2010.[3]
Breakthroughs
For 15 years and millions of dollars, Dr. Craig Venter and his team of scientists through the J.C. Venter Institute have been trying to come up with the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome.[4][5] They were finally able to make the scientific achievement of May 20th 2010. Specifically, they achieved this by framing the new development on a large scale operation; that is, reading the genetic code of a wide range of species. This breakthrough paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved.[6]
==Criticism of the Breakthroughs
See also
- Artificial related
- Biology relates
References
- ^ W. Wayte Gibbs (May 2004). "Synthetic Life". Scientific American.
- ^ "NOVA: Artificial life". Retrieved 2007-01-19.
- ^ Gibson DG, Glass JI, Lartigue C; et al. (2010). "Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome". Science. 329 (5987): 52–6. doi:10.1126/science.1190719. PMID 20488990.
{{cite journal}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|author=(help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Craig Venter creates synthetic life form". Retrieved 2010-12-31.
- ^ "Craig Venter creates synthetic life form". Retrieved 2010-12-31.
- ^ "Craig Venter creates synthetic life form". Retrieved 2010-12-31.