
I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer - gibsonf1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
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ingenium
While it would technically be considered a different species (though perhaps
in the same genus as the parent species), I wouldn't consider it artificial
life. All they did was repeatedly remove genes and see if the organism was
viable. They still have no idea how most of the genes and regulation actually
work. Simply modifying an organism doesn't constitute artificial life unless
you consider dog breeds or other things we've created by breeding. By the same
notion, it's not considered artificial life when a new custom chromosome
(called a plasmid) is inserted into a bacteria or eukaryotic cell. It's done
all the time and has been since the 80s.

All they did was get rid of "extraneous" genes that they don't deem necessary.
They're trying to make a designer organism to synthesize/produce compounds.
This is one step in achieving that, though it was arguably unnecessary. The
hard part is creating genes/proteins to make it do what you actually want.
This involves creating a new biochemical pathway (or modifying an existing
one), probably creating new enzymes to recognize your intermediates, designing
ER and golgi receptors to recognize their finished product and target it for
excretion from the cell, creating proper regulation of this pathway, etc, etc.
As you can see, it's very complicated. No one has successfully created their
own enzyme or protein yet, let alone an entire biochemical pathway of them.

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falsestprophet
I would submit that even an organism of entirely new proteins isn't
artificial. If it uses DNA, RNA and amino acids, it is just a variation on the
same 4 billion year old theme.

These proteins would not be "created" their structure would almost certainly
be evolved computationally. That would be enormously useful. And it would be
damned cool.

But, I think true artificial life simply must be made out of something else.

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viergroupie
While the current vein of research might never satisfy your stringent
definition of "artificial life", I think that's somewhat beside the point. The
usage here is synonymous with "designer life", which is becoming an increasing
possibility.

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dcurtis
Why did the Guardian take this really awesome scientific advancement and wrap
it in a politically-charged article about fighting global warming?

The ramifications of creating new life-- or a chromosome, in this case-- are
far, far more widely reaching than simply to fight climate change.

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breck
Indeed, the ramifications of this breakthrough are much larger than fighting
climate change. An editor from the Guardian told me: "these new life forms can
also fight terrorism, drunk driving and The Others."

When I asked if this development had any relevance in areas other than cliche
current event subjects, he said "Absolutely. Since we know have an answer to
where life comes from--the lab--humans won't have to waste all that time with
existential talk and can spend more time reading the Global Warming and
terrorism stories in our great news media."

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jey
What exactly was accomplished? Is the big deal that they removed a bunch of
genes and it's still alive? That article left me feeling like they were just
trying to tell me that this discovery is "omg awesome!"

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viergroupie
Breaking news: Proof of P!=NP discovered, ramifications for the fight against
bioterrorist warming discussed.

