Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years

WASHINGTON - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

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This is very interesting to see, we came from using wood to start fires to this.
I wonder what the next 50 years has in store for us as a civilization.

This is a great news. New kinds of life, thats cool. Its one step further than cloning etc.
But is this legal? Imagine the pitfalls.

depending on your definition of life it's alredy happend.

The world's first truly artificial organism has been engineered by researchers in California. The bacterium makes an amino acid that no other organism uses to build proteins.

www.newscientist.com...

reply to post by evilCorgi


That is an interesting article. However, not the same as the claims being made in the article referred to by OP. In this particular experiment it seems more like they "pushed n' prodded" some bacterium to develop a new type of bateria. Which in itself is very interesting (and a little scary). But it is still not that same as creating life out of molecules.

I have created another thread discussing the implications of such a find, here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

This was my post from the thread I created that was closed:

I was just watching this guy Pat Mooney of the company ETC Group on one of the major news stations talking about how they are in the process of creating life from scratch. He said they are learning how to create DNA sequences with not only the four basic building blocks, but possibly five and six. He claims that artificial life will be created within 5 years. He also claims that life, created entirely from scratch, will be created within a timeframe of 3 to 10 years.

Extreme Genetic Engineering: An Introduction to Synthetic Biology
Today, scientists aren’t just mapping genomes and manipulating genes, they’re building life from scratch – and they’re doing it in the absence of societal debate and regulatory oversight. Read the Report...

Check out this PDF file from their website regarding the above article:
Life from Scratch report (PDF)

Their website is: www.etcgroup.org...

Is all base on DNA and RNA knowledge that scientis knows but to tell you the truth to start life from scratch is not that easy. If scientist discover making block of life. Then getting old is goint to be hard we will probably live upto 120 years. unless we get kill by a bullet. For me, I am happy living 60 years.

First thing, Great thread.

I thought that only 90% of the human DNA was mapped, so are they going to cheat some how and use some one elses to get the full 100% or is this boy/girl/creature going to have 90% DNA, if so isnt that going to create many problems ?

What about his/her/creatures life ? 120 years of being prod'd and poke'd, sound slike a terrible 120 years to me, and he/she/creature thign udl be famous to an unbeliveable stage. The life of what ever gets created is going to be terrible in my eyes.


O and i was saying creature because if my thoguhts on the 90% DNA are right, god only nows what there going to create.

Take Care, Vix

Originally posted by newkid
Is all base on DNA and RNA knowledge that scientis knows but to tell you the truth to start life from scratch is not that easy. If scientist discover making block of life. Then getting old is goint to be hard we will probably live upto 120 years. unless we get kill by a bullet. For me, I am happy living 60 years.

When you're 10 years old, sure, 60 looks like a long time. But many people are still very vital and in full possession of their faculties in their 80s. My 80 year old dad could probably work most of the 30 year olds here into exhaustion.

But your request is noted and has been passed on to the 'Overlords'. What's your birthday, again?

With our-days computer it can be fully generated and modeled by computers at first, but I have no ideea how they are going to build the DNA from a computer model.. At the same time maybe is no reason to move it out from the computer, it can stay there and just create a robotic body.Very interesting, we will have some busy next 10 years

Subtle detail on 'artificial life' being created by scientists...

The current experimentation is not the same as 'creating life', mind you.

They're still using biologicals, bacteria, pre-made membranes, transfection with existing DNA.

So we're not talking about lightning hitting 'primordial soup' and creating the first biologicals quite yet.

There were 'organic chemicals' possibly existing, i.e. carbon-based in the 'beginning of life' here on Earth (or so it's hypothesized). They did do some experiments where they put inorganic chemicals in to percolate, iow, all the building blocks.

Still trying to track down these additional 8-12 nucleotides he claims to have created...