Creating Synthetic Life
Dr J. Craig Venture and his team have created synthetic life. No longer science fiction, but science fact. I congratulate the Dr and his team on this momentous achievement.
To be more precise in his language, he created a Gene, an entire one, modified it to make the bacteria blue, implanted this gene into a bacteria cell, and the cell began to multiply. Essentially replacing the OS of the Gene with a new one.
In his interview with Paula Zahn, which was done in excitement, and thus probably could have been done better. Dr J Craig Venture assured us that bacteria do not adapt fast enough to their circumstance, that they ensure the bacteria cannot exist outside the petri dish.
Hello, Super bugs! I am of the mind that he is dead wrong on this.
Introduce Missy Scientist, who sneezes on the petri dish. Ah well, not a wet one today, so she allows it to incubate anyway, being just slightly lazy today. Bacteria absorb other organisms, and at times take on some of the new traits of the thing they ate. This also begs the question, humans are large bacteria factories, so thus not really requiring a sneeze for some badies to get on the petri dish.
In reading the Wikipedia article, they suggest it is mutation, and also in laboratories it is possible to introduce new DNA (the sneeze). Unlike other people I don’t find this horrifying, but the question was not answered who is responsible? My question is Who is responsible enough to ensure mutations are destroyed, and not relying upon environmental factors to ensure death?
Dr Craig indicated that the bacteria they formed synthetically requires the petri dish and would die should it leave that environment.
Life finds a way, it only takes one. So relying on lack of petri dish to ensure death is not sufficient in my thinking. I would hope laboratory protocols include incineration, to ensure those things created will stay dead.
Your thoughts??…
- eSpecialized