WASHINGTON (AFP) – US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria, according to a study published Thursday. The move, which comes after five years of research, is seen as the penultimate stage in the endeavour to create an artificial life form based entirely on a man-made DNA genome — something which has tantalised scientists and sci-fi writers for years.”Through dedicated teamwork we have shown that building large genomes is now feasible and scalable so that important applications such as biofuels can be developed,” said Hamilton Smith, from the J. Craig Venter Institute, in the study published in Science.The research has been carried out at the laboratories of the controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter, who has hailed artificial life forms as a potential remedy to illness and global warming.
And the “god of the gaps” gets smaller and smaller….
Wow, just came back to this thread…looks like a lot of discussion has been stimulated.
In response to DNAUnion, sorry if my questions to you seemed condescending – that was not my intention. Regardless, your insulting responses have forstalled any further responses from me, and neatly confirmed my estimation of your character. Post all the invective you like…I shall not be responding to you in this, or any other thread.
I guess the original point I was trying to make is that although we can make reasonable definition of life, a “vital force” or some such discriminator remains conspicuously absent. To me this suggests that there is nor qualitative discriminator between life and non-life.
Dawnsis and Karen, in response to your questions about prions, there is of course no functional difference between reproduction, and “conversion”. Does a mother not “convert” the food she intakes into a baby?? Again simple text-book definitions break down, and those that adhere to them look foolish.
I would agree with Dawnsis that self-replicating molecules are as alive as we are…..or we are as non-alive as they.