Harvard Scientists’ Discovery Opens Door to Synthetic Life

Hope this hasn't been posted yet.
This seems like a very important development for genetics, we'll be able to utilize this in many different ways in the near future.
They're getting closer to making synthetic life. They could use this to design organisms with a specific task of making bio-fuel, or making proteins for vaccines and drugs. There are many possibilities.

Researchers led by George Church, whose findings helped spur the U.S. human genome project in the 1980s, have copied the part of a living cell that makes proteins, the building blocks of life. The finding overcomes a major roadblock in making synthetic self-replicating organisms, Church said today in a lecture at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The technology can be used to program cells to make virtually any protein, even some that don’t exist in nature, the scientists said. That may allow production of helpful new drugs, chemicals and organisms, including living bacteria. It also opens the door to ethical concerns about creation of processes that may be uncontrollable by life’s natural defenses.

LINK



[edit on 9-3-2009 by patent98310]

yeah this could be good,,,

or the begining of the end


i think sometimes we have become to smart for our own good

along with the good benefits,,, i also see the potential for war,,, biowarfare and all the evil uses that can be employed

so we can create synthetic life,,,,yet we can't cure cancer????
go figure

I can see the good in this story as well as the bad.

I love to hear that scientists have been able to produce or are on the brink of producing proteins synthetically as usually the lack of certain proteins are what cause alot of ailments ni today's society.

The bad news is as the above poster stated the idea that if in the wrong hands could lead to biological weapons to which no antitode could be found as well as the potential of creating artificial life and cloning.

Good development, very interesting implications.

~Keeper