" ... 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.
The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and
philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between
biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for
a thing to be alive. ... "
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.
The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and
philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between
biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for
a thing to be alive. ... "
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