{"id":18503,"date":"2010-05-20T16:55:57","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T16:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/synthetic-genomenatural-cellnew-life-the-loom\/"},"modified":"2010-05-20T16:55:57","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T16:55:57","slug":"synthetic-genomenatural-cellnew-life-the-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/synthetic-genomenatural-cellnew-life-the-loom.php","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>

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>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<\/p>","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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}