{"id":573870,"date":"2010-05-20T12:55:57","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T16:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/?p=2952"},"modified":"2010-05-20T12:55:57","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T16:55:57","slug":"synthetic-genomenatural-cellnew-life-the-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/573870","title":{"rendered":"Synthetic Genome+Natural Cell=New Life? | The Loom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig Venter has taken yet another step towards his goal of creating synthetic life forms. He’s synthesized the genome of a microbe and then implanted that piece of DNA into a DNA-free cell of another species.<\/a> And that…that thing<\/em>…can grow and divide. It’s hard to say whether this is “life from scratch,” because the boundary between such a thing and ordinary life (and non-life) is actually blurry. For example, you could say that this is still a nature hybrid, because its DNA is based on the sequence of an existing species of bacteria. If Venter made up a sequence from scratch, maybe we’d have crossed to a new terrain.<\/p>\n

Anyway–this news just hit the wires thanks to an embargo break, so I don’t have time to go into more detail. Joe Palca at NPR has posted his article<\/a> on the subject. For background, please check out these stories I’ve written about this general area of research:<\/p>\n

Tinker, Tailor: Can Venter Stitch Together A Genome From Scratch?<\/a><\/p>\n

The Meaning of Life<\/a><\/p>\n

The Six Most Important Experiments In The World<\/a><\/p>\n

Artificial Life? Old News.<\/a><\/p>\n

The High-Tech Search For A Cleaner Biofuel Alternative<\/a><\/p>\n

On the Origin of Tomorrow<\/a><\/p>\n

My Bloggingheads interview with Venter<\/a><\/p>\n

Update: The scientists are in a live press conference<\/a> that started a 1 pm. <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Craig Venter has taken yet another step towards his goal of creating synthetic life forms. He’s synthesized the genome of a microbe and then implanted that piece of DNA into a DNA-free cell of another species. And that…that thing…can grow and divide. It’s hard to say whether this is “life from scratch,” because the boundary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}