synthia
cagapakis | May 26, 2010There is an interesting and very thoughtful piece by Craig Venter and Daniel Gibson in today's Wall Street Journal going through what their breakthrough is and what it isn't, where they see the project going in the future, and why public discussion is important:
[Previous genetic engineers] did not create life in a test tube, nor did we create life from scratch. We transformed existing life into new life. We also did not design and build a new chromosome from nothing. Rather, using only digitized information, we synthesized a modified version of the naturally occurring Mycoplasma mycoides…
cagapakis | May 21, 2010The reaction to the Venter Institute's synthetic genome transplantation has been decidedly mixed. Is this the beginning of something new and wonderful, the ability to really design organisms from scratch? Is it something more sinister, the beginning of a dark era where techno-corporate (or terrorist) interests can design something that will destroy the environment in catastrophic ways? Is it just a technical advance or a conceptual breakthrough? A philosophical revolution? Is it a Big Deal or big whoop? Synthetic biology has never been just one thing and still has many different goals, with a…