{"id":18509,"date":"2010-05-20T21:16:16","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T21:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/bespoke-life-cosmic-variance\/"},"modified":"2010-05-20T21:16:16","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T21:16:16","slug":"bespoke-life-cosmic-variance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/bespoke-life-cosmic-variance.php","title":{"rendered":"Bespoke Life | Cosmic Variance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/25b40_capt.f36384a3dfe8468ca4a55741f2b91104-f36384a3dfe8468ca4a55741f2b91104-0.jpg\" alt=\"Synthetic Cell\" width=\"266\" height=\"344\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4853\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\">Craig Venter and colleagues have achieved a remarkable milestone: they <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20100520\/ap_on_sc\/us_sci_synthetic_cell\">designed a genome, and brought it to life<\/a>. More specifically, they&rsquo;ve synthesized a chromosome consisting of over a million DNA base pairs, and implanted it in a bacterial cell to replace the cell&rsquo;s original genome. That cell then reproduced, giving birth to offspring that only had the synthetic genome. See the Venter Institute <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jcvi.org\/cms\/press\/press-releases\/full-text\/article\/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher\/\">press release<\/a>, discussion in <em><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/dfxvN7\">Nature<\/a><\/em> (pdf), more discussion at <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.edge.org\/documents\/archive\/edge318.html#a\"><em>Edge<\/em><\/a>, and some <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/loom\/2010\/05\/20\/synthetic-genome-natural-cell-new-life\/\">background from Carl Zimmer<\/a>. <strong>Update<\/strong>: and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/content\/abstract\/science.1190719\">here is the paper<\/a>.<\/p><p>Who knows exactly what this means as yet &mdash; but it&rsquo;s important! You can argue if you like about whether it&rsquo;s really &ldquo;artificial life&rdquo; &mdash; that argument has already started, and already seems boring. There are also speculations about designing microorganisms to help us solve problems like global warming or (let&rsquo;s say) massive oil spills. Not completely crazy speculations, either. But there&rsquo;s a long way to go before anything like that is coming off a biological assembly line. And eventually we&rsquo;ll be going much further than that, beyond designer microorganisms into much weirder terrain. This isn&rsquo;t a culmination, it&rsquo;s just a start.<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/eb1q94yIKll3Hj0lG_URzbzHke0\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/25b40_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/eb1q94yIKll3Hj0lG_URzbzHke0\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8a66f_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8a66f_mKDcF8knxeE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/8a66f_d3IuENBWYT8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craig Venter and colleagues have achieved a remarkable milestone: they designed a genome, and brought it to life. More specifically, they&rsquo;ve synthesized a chromosome consisting of over a million DNA base pairs, and implanted it in a bacterial cell to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/bespoke-life-cosmic-variance.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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-18509","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\/18509"}],"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=18509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}