How long will it be before humans can create life from scratch in the lab?

FreeinChrist

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Well, this thread had a clean up for goading and insulting posts and posts that responded to them.

That needs to stop.


Reopening this, but keep it civil.
 
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Black Dog

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And by that I don't mean synthesising a replacement set of DNA and placing it in a cell and noting that it continues to live (which has been done). I mean create something living from base chemicals.

How far are we away from achieving this?

BTW: My personal intention is to post this question, and stand back for at least a bit and let others discuss.

Now that we are understanding the building blocks of matter, surely it can't be too long before we have a 3D printer that can print at the particle level. Then it will be really easy, everyone will be able to do it. Just download the "image" to print, and voila. It will like this:

sea_monkey_pic_0.jpg


only for real.

Will that make us Gods? We could literally put our initials on the DNA. Creationism proved true, confirming God. A huge chunk of humanity would call the person doing this God.
 
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Loudmouth

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Will that make us Gods? We could literally put our initials on the DNA.

Already done.

"Researchers at the J Craig Venter Institute recently unveiled their first self-replicating synthetic bacteria (M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0) whose DNA was 'programmed' base pair by base pair. To verify that they had synthesized a new organism and not assembled the DNA from another natural bacteria, scientists encoded a series of 'watermarks' into the genes of M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0. There are four of these hidden messages: an explanation of the coding system used, a URL address for those who crack the code to go visit, a list of 46 authors and contributors, and a series of famous quotes. The presence of these watermarks verifies that M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 truly is synthetic and demonstrates the precision and power of JCVI's new techniques in synthetic biology."
http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/2...acteria-has-secret-messages-coded-in-its-dna/

Creationism proved true, confirming God. A huge chunk of humanity would call the person doing this God.

I won't be calling Craig Venter "God" anytime soon, but I have heard he has a big ego.
 
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Black Dog

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Hey! C'mon now!

If it wasn't for Joe Orlando, where would I be today?
I loved MAD magazine. I had pretty well all the issues from ~1968-1975. And I used to love finding the pocketbooks in used book stores, especially the old ones.
 
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Black Dog

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Already done.

"Researchers at the J Craig Venter Institute recently unveiled their first self-replicating synthetic bacteria (M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0) whose DNA was 'programmed' base pair by base pair. To verify that they had synthesized a new organism and not assembled the DNA from another natural bacteria, scientists encoded a series of 'watermarks' into the genes of M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0. There are four of these hidden messages: an explanation of the coding system used, a URL address for those who crack the code to go visit, a list of 46 authors and contributors, and a series of famous quotes. The presence of these watermarks verifies that M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 truly is synthetic and demonstrates the precision and power of JCVI's new techniques in synthetic biology."
http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/2...acteria-has-secret-messages-coded-in-its-dna/



I won't be calling Craig Venter "God" anytime soon, but I have heard he has a big ego.

Thank you for the heads up. We really have become Gods, creating life at our whim.
 
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Dr GS Hurd

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There are two goals with synthetic life; Does it teach us about the origin, and likelihood of life? and; Can we use synthetic life to manufacture commercially valued chemicals?

The last is the real reason that we don't have totally synthetic life today. It is far easier to make a modified Yeast, or Bacteria to make the organic molecules we want for medicines, and have not found yet in nature.

I read scientific literature every single day. I retired years ago, but it is a hard habit to break. The design, and application of new genes is published somewhere every single day.
 
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AV1611VET

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE
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How to Claim You've Created Life in a Laboratory:
  1. Find something alive.
  2. Put it in a Petri dish.
  3. Add some ingredients so it will look "worked on".
  4. Wait 24 hours.
  5. If it's still alive, make your claim.
 
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Loudmouth

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How to Claim You've Created Life in a Laboratory:
  1. Find something alive.
  2. Put it in a Petri dish.
  3. Add some ingredients so it will look "worked on".
  4. Wait 24 hours.
  5. If it's still alive, make your claim.

That's not it.

1. Find something alive.
2. Take out its DNA so that it can't survive.
3. Add new DNA that was synthesized in the lab.
4. Wait for it to reproduce.
5. Introduce the newly made species.
 
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AV1611VET

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That's not it.

1. Find something alive.
2. Take out its DNA so that it can't survive.
3. Add new DNA that was synthesized in the lab.
4. Wait for it to reproduce.
5. Introduce the newly made species.
You mean kill it, then resurrect it?
 
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