read this article in Fox, which claims that scientists are trying to create a new life form
Interesting choice of words, but inaccurate.
The plan will begin with Mycoplasma genitalium, a tiny organism that lives in the genital tracts of people and may cause or contribute to an inflammation of the urethra. All genetic material will be removed from the organism. Scientists will synthesize an artificial string of genetic material, resembling a naturally occurring chromosome, that they hope will contain the minimum number of M. genitalium genes needed to sustain life.The artificial chromosome will then be inserted in the hollowed-out cell, where it will be tested for its ability to survive and reproduce.
In musical terms, this is like Vanilla Ice claiming the base line from Ice Ice Baby was his because he used it differently.
Scientists in this experiment are not "creating" anything, they are producing a modified copy of an existing organism. Breeders have been doing this for generations, using selective breeding. The tools are becoming more refined; the actual effect is staying the same.
So why use the word "create?"
I see a couple of reasons. First it sounds snazzier than "modifying." Second, in the ongoing war between science and religion, both side seek to pre-empt the terminaology of the other. On one side, scientific creationism. On the other, "creating a partially man made organism."
Note to the science community; if you want to claim you have created something, start in the lab with carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, plus sufficient quantites of the trace elements you need. Give me a call when you make something from scratch.
If I order a pizza, I don't turn around and call it cooking dinner.
That being said, the experiment itself is a pretty cool one, sure to give us lots of new insight into how the genetic information encoded in DNA is used to regulate an organism.
Posted by Rich at November 21, 2002 4:41 PMHmm... Well, it's not "create", because they are using the existing natural cell machinery. On the other hand, "modifying" is too bland - and its *not* anything like breeding.
They are replacing the entire genome. If they replaced it with the genome of any other species, then the cell would effectivly become that species. This is because cell machinery is designed to express the genome, and while cells are very different, the essential machinery is mostly the same from species to species.
Think of it by analogy to a computer. The the genome is the software, the operating system of the cell. The rest of the cell is an embedded computing system designed to execute a genome.
Because all cells are decended from a common ancestor, they all execute the same "code" - they are code-compatible, unlike, say,Intel vs. Motorola computer chips.
What they are doing is replacing the OS completely. Sort of like wiping Windows off your hard disk and installing Linux instead. The resulting machine is radically different - it's almost irrevalent that the hardware is the same.
The replacement genome is completely synthetic, assembled from DNA base base units, which are very simple molecules. They may not have been assembled from pure elements (though they could have been, had they wanted to waste the money on something pointless like that), but intent of the design is completely man-made, built from standard feedstocks.
That's very, very close to "create". Your analogy to ordering pizza is weak - especially requiring complete synthsis from atoms. Simple well-understood components that theoretically could be synthsized are good enough. Do you personally have to go out and grow gain, mill it into flour, pick tomatos and make sauce with them, raise cows, milk them, make cheese from the milk, and then combine all these ingredients in the pizza you make before you are willing to say you cooked dinner? No. If you just combine bought ingredients of flour, sauce and cheese to hand-make home-made pizza, you are doing more than necessary for most people consider it "making dinner".
Of course, most of their creations will probably die quickly (system crash). A natural genome is complex and subtle. But on the other hand, by designing many successive genomes and working out the inevitable bugs in the design, great amounts of knowledge will be developed. Eventually some will live and thrive, with completely artificial natures.
Pretty cool.
Posted by: Eric E. Coe on November 22, 2002 2:16 AMDefinitely cool, but still not even close to creation.
They aren't replacing the DNA with an entirely synthetic strand, but a copy made from the template of the original, which they will modify. If I paint a copy of the Mona Lisa tomaorrow, only I give her a bigger smile, have I created something new, or modified something which already existed? The replacement genome is a copy. Since the cell machinery has to remain the same, about 90% of the genetic material will remain the same. The method used to produce the new chromosomes is new, but this is hardly creation.
Again, this is using a more refined tool, ie genetic engineering, used to accomplish the same function as selective breeding, except that the new tool is more powerful by several orders of magnitude. We don't have to wait for traits to arise randomly before we select for them; we can splice them in with only one generation. Also, selective breeding works best for traits which are strongly expressed in the development and behavior of the subject. It's difficult to select for something you can't see.
Semantics; how about 'engineering' a new organism then?
Posted by: eyes on August 5, 2004 5:07 PMEngineering is an excellent word, although I don't agre that the difference is merely semantic.
Posted by: rich on August 5, 2004 8:15 PM