[Carlhole]

First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell

ROCKVILLE, MD and San Diego, CA (May 20, 2010)— Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a not-for-profit genomic research organization, published results today describing the successful construction of the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell. The team synthesized the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides genome. The synthetic cell is called Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 and is the proof of principle that genomes can be designed in the computer, chemically made in the laboratory and transplanted into a recipient cell to produce a new self-replicating cell controlled only by the synthetic genome.

This research will be published by Daniel Gibson et al in the May 20th edition of Science Express and will appear in an upcoming print issue of Science.

The JCVI scientists believe this technology will undoubtedly lead to the development of many important applications and products including biofuels, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, clean water and food products.



(PO members no longer submit news here, right?)

[Cid_Yama]

"It's ALIVE!" Yes, quietly buried in the back pages, man has created life. A living, reproducing organism.

If we weren't already in line to be wiped out by other things, I would be really worried.

As it is, self-replicating armageddon will have to take a back seat.

[Homesteader]

Yeah, agreed Cid. I've been following this for a few years and discussing it with my students. At one point the Ventner Institute stated they would be able to make a synthetic human genome by 2014. Just a few short years away.

I'll quote that Jurassic Park guy again. . ."just because they could doesn't mean they should".

[Cid_Yama]

A totally synthetic genome makes targeted bio-weapons now a potential reality. Don't like a certain race? Now you can target just them. Imagine if non-caucasian terrorists could devise a bio-weapon that just attacked caucasians? They could infect themselves safely, then, being carriers, walk freely among the population.

Southern rascists want to get rid of blacks? The same. We can all just wipe each other out.

[ian807]

Targeted bio-weapons are no more or less possible now. All these techniques have been available for awhile now.

FYI, you're not going to get a bio-weapon to wipe out people of African ancestry. As a group, the population on the African continent have more genetic diversity than either Europeans or Asians. You could much more easily wipe out Europeans or Asians than Africans with a targeted bio-weapon.

[eastbay]

Yeah, agreed Cid. I've been following this for a few years and discussing it with my students. At one point the Ventner Institute stated they would be able to make a synthetic human genome by 2014. Just a few short years away.

I'll quote that Jurassic Park guy again. . ."just because they could doesn't mean they should".

.... but someone will. No doubt about it. Fantastic story.

[Carlhole]

It's a ridiculous sort of thought process that technology luddites exhibit. When you bring up a science issue like the creation of life from mere chemicals, or the creation of a working human brain inside a supercomputer, etc, they say "It will NEVER be done because it's so far outside our puny comprehension"!

Then, a year or two later, when rapid progress has led to key breakthroughs, they cry "It's immoral!".

But you KNOW man-made life, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc will all soon be part of our lives, forever changing and ultimately improving how we go about the business of living, perhaps even improving the human organism itself.

What do they want? To go back to the Jurassic age when there was no intelligence? No on to look around at the world and see it or think about it or understand it? How many hundreds of millions of years of behemoth stupidity do the luddites want?

[vaseline2008]

The possibilities are endless, think Gattaca. However something that has not been thrown around a whole lot is the Immortality Gene...something to think about. But of course, this won't be covered by any Health Insurance, only the elite rich will be able to afford any such "therapy" or benefits from this line of research, including designer babies and stronger, faster, and better soldiers.

We all knew this day was coming when the Human Genome Project was first started.

[lper100km]

The lure of knowledge is an inborn human trait. The dazzling prospects of benefits blind us to the dangers. The Greeks knew all about this and enshrined it in mythology more than 2,500 years ago.

The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Zeus' palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Zeus the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Zeus sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men.[6]

From the Iliad (Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora)




Modern day short form: Curiosity killed the cat

[Plantagenet]

Vettner is also running a project to genengineer a bacteria that will poop out oil.

Given the man has now created life, he's probably got a good shot at creating an oil-pooping bacteria too.

[Pretorian]

What do they want? To go back to the Jurassic age when there was no intelligence? No on to look around at the world and see it or think about it or understand it? How many hundreds of millions of years of behemoth stupidity do the luddites want?

I like techology and science's bells and whistles as any other guy next door, but we live in the world with twisted rules and perverted minds that twist any invention and novelty into nothing but a murder weapon to kill other people, or animals , plants, ets. I challenge you to give me one example when its not the case.
I mean pictures from Hubble telescope are great and Call of Duty 7 seems to be promicing, but what is the acceptable price to pay for all this? I have tritium in my water for crying out load, among many other things that never existed before. I cant eat fish from visually pristine lakes and rivers around me. I have a good 150-200 species going extinct within 1-1.5 hour drive where i live. So tell me how much your progress is going to cost me and hurry up with the bill, because i am done.

[lper100km]

Vettner is also running a project to genengineer a bacteria that will poop out oil.

Given the man has now created life, he's probably got a good shot at creating an oil-pooping bacteria too.

Given the current circumstances, it would be better if Ventner engineered bacteria specifically to eat spilled oil.

[Carlhole]

Vettner is also running a project to genengineer a bacteria that will poop out oil.

Given the man has now created life, he's probably got a good shot at creating an oil-pooping bacteria too.

Given the current circumstances, it would be better if Ventner engineered bacteria specifically to eat spilled oil.

That could very probably be one of the bio-science's most promising contribution. Products already exist. It would be interesting to hear what kinds of phone calls the CEOs have been getting lately.

[Cid_Yama]

Given the current circumstances, it would be better if Ventner engineered bacteria specifically to eat spilled oil.

And when all the oil is gone and they are still hungry, they start looking at ...YOU!

We are stardust, we are golden

We are million year old carbon .... oh, sh*t

We'll make it back to the garden as compost.

Musical interlude

I wish it was possible for the younger people to know that time as we did. Our souls were enriched. And it IS time to get ourselves back to the garden.

[eastbay]

One day in the not too distant future Gaia will for unexplainable reasons create a frightening and destructive life form that will madly run amok over the entire face of our good earth mindlessly consuming and laying to waste all it encounters with utter lack of compassion or concern for its future until no other life forms whatsoever remain.

Unknown Sage, 10,000 BC

[Graeme]

Craig Venter's research is scary, but not in the way you think

But it may turn out not have any significant applications at all. It might be possible to use it to manufacture a form of algae which could absorb CO2 and produce oil – but it might not. Although Exxon has invested money in just such a process, there isn't a lot of evidence that the project will succeed.

Dr Venter's technique also could aid the production of vaccines. But other than increasing the potency of medicines used to fight infections, no one claims that there will be any specific medical benefits from it. Even Dr Venter thinks that using his technique on any cells other than the most primitive forms of bacteria is "a long way off". For the foreseeable future, it cannot be used on human cells, or even on more complex bacteria. So unlike stem-cell research, which hopes to find ways to make damaged human organs, nerves and tissue repair themselves, it does not hold out the promise of cures for dozens of presently untreatable diseases.

telegraph

[EnergyUnlimited]

It is poorly understood by public that Venter did not make anything materially "new".
He have combined synthetic copies of existing genes together and assembled these in very much the same way like they are assembled in existing bacteria.
So his achievement is only a synthetic replica of existing thing, not any sort of unknown up to date synthetic life.

Basic unit of life is a gene.
He did not make any new genes which are doing something different than existing genes do.
There is nothing new in his synthetic bacteria.
This bacteria is materially not different than any other GMO bacteria.

So it is utter nonsense or investor scam or both when Venter is claiming that his synthetic organisms will be any better in removal of CO2 from air than existing organisms are.
Why?
Because he will work with units of life (genes) which are already circulating in Nature.
He will not work with anything materially new.
To make any "improvements" he would have to design and synthesize new man made genes which are enabling to proceed with new metabolic tasks unknown for Nature.
Essentially he would have to produce entirely new coding strings of DNA tailored to produce enzymes (proteins) which are by design capable of catalyzing chemical transformations not accessible to living organisms or alternatively capable of catalyzing already accessible transformations in more efficient way than Nature can.
Needless to say he is far, far too stupid to even begin with such task.

All what he does is some copycat and yet he is claiming that something new was made.
So his work is comparable to work of photocopier and not to work of designer.

[EnergyUnlimited]

But you KNOW man-made life, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, etc will all soon be part of our lives, forever changing and ultimately improving how we go about the business of living, perhaps even improving the human organism itself.

...and pink unicorns will soon roam the Moon.

Given the man has now created life,...

He created nothing materially new.
He just copied existing setup.
Basic unit of life is gene.
He did not make any new genes.
He just synthesized copies of existing genes and assembled these very much like they are assembled in existing bacteria.

So his work will not deliver much more than current GMO designers can do.
Potentially he can make it easy to produce many proteins not occurring normally in Nature.
However we are likely to find out that these proteins are not doing anything useful or (if only few alterations comparing to natural product are made) their work will be very much like work of mutation crippled natural proteins.
Why?
There is an incredibly low probability that an arbitrary sequence of aminoacids is going to perform some useful task.
Existing enzymes or other biological proteins are incredibly rare useful islands in vast sea of uselessness.

[Carlhole]

...So his work will not deliver much more than current GMO designers can do.

What a lot of BS you spout on my threads. I see you still have PhDs in 7 different fields and a hard-on for anything I post, huh EU? That's what I would do if I had 7 PhDs: argue with people in PO.com.

Synthetic Genomes FAQ page. For example:

Q: What are the next steps for this research at JCVI?
A: The work to create the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell was an important proof of concept. The team at JCVI has learned a lot from the nearly 15 years it has taken to get to this successful stage. From this proof of concept experiment the team is now ready to build more complex organisms with useful properties. For example, many, including scientists at SGI, are already using available sequencing information to engineer cells that can produce energy, pharmaceuticals, and industrial compounds, and sequester carbon dioxide. The team at JCVI is already working on their ultimate objective, which has been to synthesize a minimal cell that has only the machinery necessary for independent life. Now that a cell can be synthesized from a synthetic genome in a simple near-minimal bacterial cell, it becomes possible for the team to test for the functionality of a genome. They can whittle away non-essential DNA regions from the synthetic genome and repeat transplantation experiments until no more genes can be disrupted and the genome is as small as possible. This minimal bacteria cell will enable a greater understanding of the function of every gene in a cell and a new vision of cells as understandable machines comprised of biological parts of known function.

Inform yourself.

This story is news because, clearly, a research milestone has been reached. It makes the most sense to wait for the full story to be published in Science - which will be shortly.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Q: What are the next steps for this research at JCVI?
A: The work to create the first self-replicating, synthetic bacterial cell was an important proof of concept. The team at JCVI has learned a lot from the nearly 15 years it has taken to get to this successful stage. ... The team at JCVI is already working on their ultimate objective, which has been to synthesize a minimal cell that has only the machinery necessary for independent life. Now that a cell can be synthesized from a synthetic genome in a simple near-minimal bacterial cell, it becomes possible for the team to test for the functionality of a genome. They can whittle away non-essential DNA regions from the synthetic genome and repeat transplantation experiments until no more genes can be disrupted and the genome is as small as possible. This minimal bacteria cell will enable a greater understanding of the function of every gene in a cell and a new vision of cells as understandable machines comprised of biological parts of known function.

Inform yourself.

This story is news because, clearly, a research milestone has been reached. It makes the most sense to wait for the full story to be published in Science - which will be shortly.

So their experiments are basically resembling pulling off legs and wings from a fly and finding out, is that poor fly still able to breed or not.

In overall their experiments are not adding any new information to the system. They are withholding such information and the objection of research is to create as much as possible crippled system, still able to reproduce under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.

From this proof of concept experiment the team is now ready to build more complex organisms with useful properties. For example, many, including scientists at SGI, are already using available sequencing information to engineer cells that can produce energy, pharmaceuticals, and industrial compounds, and sequester carbon dioxide.

And these are rubbish or investor scam.

1. Certain pharmaceuticals or industrial compounds can be made by GMO bacterias/fungi and discussed research does not provide much of advantage in their production.

2. All organisms are producing (or rather processing) energy, so some triviality is parroted as a breakthrough.

3. Carbon dioxide can be sequestered either by dissolving in water, what is trivial or by means of photosynthesis.
Efficiency of photosynthesis is currently restricted by concentration of CO2 in air.
So the limiting factor (concentration of CO2 in air) cannot be addressed by genetic meddling with bacterial cell.