avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2010-05-22 09:17 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2010-05-22 09:17 am
(no subject)
Sorry about yesterday.
Several people have raved in my hearing about the "Scientists create life" story that's come up, in which a Doctor Craig Venter and his team have designed a synthetic genome and implanted it into a host cell. I have read the Guardian article, but as you all know I'm a fuzzy-minded arts person, so could someone clarify for me: was the host cell already living when the genome was implanted into it? That's certainly the impression I'm getting. Which, if true, means that, while the scientists have in fact created an artificial living thing, they've actually done it by modifying an existing living thing. This is not, if I'm right, your actual "life out of lifeless tissue" or "life out of primordial soup" or "life out of nothing" jobbie. The life was there already. They just modded the software.
I'm going very gently here, because I don't want to push anyone's buttons the way mine got pushed. Am I right about this or am I wrong?
EDIT: looks as if I'm wrong--they're calling the host a "dead" cell in another article. So, life out of lifeless tissue. Two more steps to go, and then I'll have to start falling back to "well, all right, life may be entirely physical, but what about intelligence, eh? eh?" And then they'll do that as well, and then I'll know that everything is exactly as it seems, and that will be that.
Or maybe they'll find there's something they can't do at this stage of our development, and I shall rejoice, because it isn't meant to be that simple.
Housework. I shall arise and go now and do housework. We have company coming in a week's time.
Several people have raved in my hearing about the "Scientists create life" story that's come up, in which a Doctor Craig Venter and his team have designed a synthetic genome and implanted it into a host cell. I have read the Guardian article, but as you all know I'm a fuzzy-minded arts person, so could someone clarify for me: was the host cell already living when the genome was implanted into it? That's certainly the impression I'm getting. Which, if true, means that, while the scientists have in fact created an artificial living thing, they've actually done it by modifying an existing living thing. This is not, if I'm right, your actual "life out of lifeless tissue" or "life out of primordial soup" or "life out of nothing" jobbie. The life was there already. They just modded the software.
I'm going very gently here, because I don't want to push anyone's buttons the way mine got pushed. Am I right about this or am I wrong?
EDIT: looks as if I'm wrong--they're calling the host a "dead" cell in another article. So, life out of lifeless tissue. Two more steps to go, and then I'll have to start falling back to "well, all right, life may be entirely physical, but what about intelligence, eh? eh?" And then they'll do that as well, and then I'll know that everything is exactly as it seems, and that will be that.
Or maybe they'll find there's something they can't do at this stage of our development, and I shall rejoice, because it isn't meant to be that simple.
Housework. I shall arise and go now and do housework. We have company coming in a week's time.
no subject
Work out the sequence of the DNA.
Make, from elementary chemicals, an exact copy of that DNA.
Take the original DNA out of a living cell and replace it with the identical copy made from elementary chemicals.
So no, it's not a world-shattering event. But it is a critical single step in the path.
For the first time ever, a living organism is running on DNA that isn't *of itself* directly descended from the first replicating 'organism' billions of years ago.
It's, of itself, nothing new. As I understand it, you wouldn't be able to see any difference between that cell and all the others. But what they can do now is start making changes to the DNA they generate and see what results. So they have an extremely powerful new tool for doing research.
And if they ever do make an entirely artificial life form this is one of the tools they will be using, and which they wouldn't be able to manage without.