It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.
Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.
Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.
In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...ticle/2007/12/16/AR2007121601900_pf.htmlThis technology should be pretty scary to anyone. Besides the possibility of accidentally unleashing some kind of superplague, consider that bioengineered retroviruses could be used to take over human cells, causing forced mutations. I think the Doom movie was based on something along these lines... After all, what military doesn't want to grow the perfect soldier? What about physical augmentation attempts for athletes? Or how about attempts at "fixing" certain rebellious or otherwise undesirable elements within society so that they are more docile? Why bother with drugs when you can go straight for the genes?
This statement is a beauty:
Many scientists say the threat has been overblown. Venter notes that his synthetic genomes are spiked with special genes that make the microbes dependent on a rare nutrient not available in nature.
Didn't they watch Jurassic Park? I believe the bioengineered dinosaurs were supposed to be lysine deficient, but that didn't stop them. As for a real world example of this kind of thinking resulting in gross failure, I remember antibiotics being hailed as "the end of infectious disease". Now you hear about MRSA and other "superbugs" that antibiotics can't touch in the news all the time. All they did was manage to create stronger pathogens. Tinkering with nature in this manner is opening Pandora's box once again. Nature will survive and adapt, it always does, but mankind might find itself paying a heavy price for meddling with things it should not.
