http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10138831.stm


So... Is this recent accomplishment really a big deal?
What's the future hold?
And mostly, is this kind of thing really a good idea?....is it inevitable?

5/21/2010 2:23:07 PM

terrible idea but this isn't artificial life. more reverse bioengineering. Nothing was made from scratch and no new organism was mad.e

5/21/2010 2:28:47 PM

All you have to do now is change the genotype in any way that isn't naturally occurring and you've got a new organism.

I mean, it's been done before with viruses, but bacteria? The DNA has over a million base pairs. This is fucking awesome.

What does the future hold? Fine tuned genetic engineering. Easily choosing properties of bacteria. Designing organisms with specific functions. Yes, it's inevitable.

Now if you listen to the people that watch too many movies this and nanotechnology are going to kill us all. Along with the Large Hadron Collider.

[Edited on May 21, 2010 at 2:51 PM. Reason : future.]

5/21/2010 2:49:43 PM

It's a huge scientific accomplishment though all the headlines about artificial life are misleading. I would chalk this up as inevitable. While I agree that there are a lot of great things you can do with this sort of technology, there is also a lot of possibility for doing really terrible things with it as well (which is typical for every significant scientific advance). After all, we've decimated entire ecosystems by just moving a bug or plant from one part of the world to another both accidentally and intentionally thinking we could control it, imagine what we could do by manipulating genetic code, particularly someone with less-than-noble purposes.

Still, I agree that it's not about to bring about the apocalypse, but we need to be careful nevertheless. Modern chemistry, nuclear fission, etc.: all brought great benefits to human civilization, but also introduced new problems as well.

5/21/2010 4:01:57 PM

Quote :

"Now if you listen to the people that watch too many movies this and nanotechnology are going to kill us all. Along with the Large Hadron Collider."

and Opus Dei

5/21/2010 4:05:15 PM

Quote :

"What does the future hold?"

Velociraptors

Quote :

"Designing organisms with specific functions."

Velociraptors

Quote :

"Yes, it's inevitable. "

Velociraptors

5/21/2010 6:21:16 PM

^ lol

This is the inevitable evolution of genetic experimentation. If you want to call this a bad idea, you might as well call science in general a bad idea. Sure, the technology could one day be twisted to kill off the planet, but we've got plenty of ways to do that right now. Opportunities, just staying in the realm of bacteria, are exciting - cells tailor made to produce specific vaccines or to create alternative fuel sources.

5/22/2010 7:51:05 PM

Quote :

"terrible idea but this isn't artificial life. more reverse bioengineering. Nothing was made from scratch and no new organism was mad.e"

Man, if only we could get all the morons to be convinced of this, they maybe they would stop trying to stop things like stem cell research while the rest of us move on and make progress.

The reality is that this is artificial life. They wrote the names of the researchers into the genome. They used the building blocks of DNA from nature, of course, and only altered an existing organism, of course, but they manufactured its DNA while changing whatever whimsical thing they felt like.

It's not a sudden breakthrough b/c they've been working on this, and done many stepping stones, all the time for the last 15 years. They crossed a line with the latest strain, that's all. But that line was artificial life.

5/22/2010 8:10:11 PM

Maybe we have different ideas on what makes something "artificial life" but this just seems like modified natural life.

5/23/2010 3:01:28 PM

It's not artificial in the sense that the cell walls are made of synthetic polymers.

But, from what I understand, it's artificial in the sense that humans wrote the DNA. I would think it's theoretically possible, with enough knowledge (that we don't yet have), to program the cell to turn into a finger or eyeball.

That's a pretty big step, and I think worthy of the title "artificial life" even though not 100% of the elements are purely artificial. The first Wright Brother's plane for example could only fly so high, and so far, but it was the first "airplane" even though is bares no resemblance to any airplanes of today.

5/23/2010 3:19:06 PM

[Edited on May 23, 2010 at 4:02 PM. Reason : ]

5/23/2010 4:02:19 PM

5/23/2010 4:27:12 PM

^ is it sad that I recognize where that's from?

5/23/2010 6:05:28 PM

Jurassic Park

5/23/2010 6:14:25 PM

Dinosaws

5/23/2010 6:46:57 PM

Biology isn't all too concerned with how the cell walls were made. We're always interested in the primary line of DNA - it's what distinguishes one organism from the next.

The DNA the Synthetic Genomics made was created from 4 bottles of chemicals (from my memory of the press conference). That's a 100% artificial piece of DNA. It then used the rest of a cell from an already existing organism and it procreated into a cell colony.

No, it's not entirely artificial, and the design was mostly written by nature anyway. But the cell has no mother or father and is genetically startlingly unique. The last time that happened was around 4 billion years ago.

5/23/2010 9:59:44 PM

All I know is that if, in my lifetime, a kill-or-be-killed world war breaks out between those who do and do not advocate using this technology to radically change the world forever...
...I'll be on the "organic", original, non-playing-god side. And I will kill as many enemies as I can.


There are really no significant problems in the world anymore that aren't self-caused. Overpopulation is really the only lasting problem. Disease? Death? It's a part of life -- it's happened forever, and there's no good reason it should stop. Furthermore -- it's probably necessary. If any of you, and I know some of you do, advocate a complete (no one left out; can't opt out,) technology-driven evolution into a world free of disease and even death, then, well, make no mistake: You are possibly the only real definition of evil. If you aren't defeated, you will end all human life forever. (and no other robots or somthing that evolved from us... I mean 100% extinct.)

(no more wine tongiht )

5/23/2010 11:21:09 PM

dude, put down the sci-fi

5/23/2010 11:34:21 PM

^^ wtf mate. People who understand the benefit of modern science are evil? What is this, Fight Club?

5/24/2010 8:45:42 AM

^^
lol

^
Come on, guy. Ask me something that's not a straw-man. It's not cool to assume that your interpretation of my statements are what I necessarily meant. I clearly did not state that "People who understand the benefit of modern science are evil."

Quote :

"What is this, Fight Club?"

You'll have to explain that one -- I never actually saw that movie.... Is modern science being evil a theme?

5/24/2010 9:35:05 AM

Nah, just modern everything. It's a movie worth watching though so I won't spoil it.

I was just wondering what the hell you were talking about.

5/24/2010 9:52:31 AM

Quote :

"If any of you, and I know some of you do, advocate a complete (no one left out; can't opt out,) technology-driven evolution into a world free of disease and even death, then, well, make no mistake: You are possibly the only real definition of evil. "

lolz. Greenpeace much?

5/24/2010 9:53:25 AM

Yeah, they're mostly okay.

5/24/2010 10:08:38 AM

Bring on the posthuman society, I say. Let us make an end for death and disease. Fuck telomere shortening, fuck DNA transcription errors.

5/24/2010 10:11:13 AM

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!

5/24/2010 10:18:32 AM

If we don't become a trans-human in the next 200 years, then society will be "survival of the stupid", and the world will be doomed.

People don't understand that you don't need the next level of technology to completely screw things up. Environmental destruction is on a rapid pace by just poor people cutting down the rain forests and planting crops that will destroy the topsoil in 4 years. Large industrial projects are the only things that have to write an impact statement and actually convince someone that it won't destroy the environment, but Bubba building his pig farm doesn't worry too much about it. In fact, the sophistication of the technology is almost directly correlated with the responsibility exercised with the environment. Just look at nuclear reprocessing. We have a regulation nothing like any other industry that doesn't make any sense? Oh well, this is nuclear so it's ok.

In spite of this, the environmental footprint of something is almost always inversely proportional to its level of technology. It's the same with artificial life; Exxon is spending $300M x2 on these guys b/c they could possibly make algae that can replace oil. The last generation of biofuels consists of refining crops into ethanol, and before that, burning wood in a ghastly inefficient process. The point is that these artificial cells could form algae ponds that poop the perfect form of oil to burn in ICEs with insanely high efficiency. And most importantly, it won't destroy arable land! That is, if Greenpeace doesn't succeed in their terror campaign to keep technology from saving the world.

The anti-technology lobby is mostly a competition of who can be more stupid than the next. It's the same for the green movement and the ultra-conservative factions. With fear of the the unknown being at the root, any excuse to oppose science goes. I mean, "artificial life" as a phrase is so loaded that people can easily get away with correlating it with life extension technology. Never mind the fact that this technology is categorically inapplicable to complex organisms like humans that have a vastly more complicated cell life cycle. It's a miracle that they ever found a cell that was so non-picky about it's genetic material that it allowed this to happen. Aside form that, no one ever gave a darn about Craig Venture's well-informed explanation that the cells they make a fragile and weak - designed to preform a specific purpose, as opposed to natural cells that are designed to survive and procreate.

Greenpeace is typically under the misconception that they've identified a problem that others have not, and then they go on campaigns to terrorize attempts to solve said problem. I hope that someday our educational system will get our population to the level that they see artificial life as a solution, and not a Death Star.

But I'm probably too optimistic.

[Edited on May 24, 2010 at 11:05 AM. Reason : ]

5/24/2010 11:02:01 AM

see: Texas State Board of Education textbooks revisions.

Don't hold your breath.

5/24/2010 11:16:09 AM

Quote :

"artificial life as a solution"

A solution to what? to overpopulation?

5/24/2010 11:16:57 AM

Quote :

"A solution to what? to overpopulation?"

What causes overpopulation? Yes we know, having far more babies than the sustainable replacement rate. But who has so many children and why? The answer lies in rural, largely agrarian, and conservative cultures.

The Green Revolution caused population to skyrocket by providing food with efficiency never before seen. But it helped rein in population growth by displacing people from manual labor, low value-added sectors of the economy (where birthrates are high). The characteristic of a developed economy is a large service sector - a sector that can't exist without technological heavy-movers taking up the slack of what would otherwise be manual labor. Norman Borlaug, one of the fathers of the green revolution, wanted to feed all of the world through technology, but the revolution also destroyed the labor investment of agriculture in places like the USA.

One can not answer the question "what is right?" with a strictly general discourse on technology and society. You need to look at the current state of the world. This is a world with 1/3rd of the population racing at a breakneck speed to a Western society-like prosperity. The nations leading the way are seeing their birthrates collapse by a completely natural phenomena.

It would be nice if the entire world would just develop and stabilize by doing so. But right now we can't. We drive cars powered by oil and the pressure put on commodities by China bids ill for the rest of the poor in the world. At our current technology level, THE PIE ISN'T BIG ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE. This isn't about the number of people Earth can support alone - it's about the level of prosperity the world can support for the people we have. If we can't offer prosperity to the world through technology, we're screwed 2 ways. We're screwed b/c humans will destroy the Earth trying to achieve that prosperity, and the lack of prosperity will leave birth rates at unsustainable levels that put us at the point of no return in 50 years.

We have lots of challenges at hand; energy, health care, transportation, materials, water, global warming, etc. Artificial life will likely address all of these - and it will do so through what is basically fancy bacteria. I'm willing to face the moral challenges associated with that. I'm not happy to hear knee-jerk reactions rejecting artificial life as 'mad science' because they're based almost entirely on Hollywood arguments and other misinformation irrelevant of what this is.

5/24/2010 1:43:26 PM

You act like most environmentalists and those opposed to overpopulation oppose all technology.
This idea is old and bunk -- of course technology is good, and will help solve problems like pollution and overpopulation.
But advocating for science and technology, in general, is in no way necessarily advocating for artificial life.
As with artificial GMOs, if science forever keeps artificial life 100% contained in quarantined labs,(earthquake- and hurricane-proof,) with absolutely zero chance of compromising the natural organic world -- Then I, and nearly everyone in the world (who isn't some religious nut perhaps,) should have no problem with it. Problem is, that scenario is nearly impossible to guarantee.

5/24/2010 1:56:28 PM

lol@organic

5/24/2010 2:00:39 PM

Quote :

"Bring on the posthuman society, I say. Let us make an end for death and disease. Fuck telomere shortening, fuck DNA transcription errors."

We would just die of starvation instead of old age.

5/24/2010 2:01:00 PM

Quote :

"You act like most environmentalists and those opposed to overpopulation oppose all technology."

I'll go ahead and generalize a little here. Environmentalists generally oppose or encourage technology based on qualitative aspects of the technology. The discomfort with GMOs and artificial life is based entirely on a surface-level evaluation of the acceptability of it. Much of the environmental movement has been pushing itself to irrelevance by the lack of any objective measure of environmental merit.

Quote :

"This idea is old and bunk -- of course technology is good, and will help solve problems like pollution and overpopulation. But advocating for science and technology, in general, is in no way necessarily advocating for artificial life."

I'm sure, because you've dealt a negative evaluation of artificial life.

Quote :

"As with artificial GMOs, if science forever keeps artificial life 100% contained in quarantined labs,(earthquake- and hurricane-proof,) with absolutely zero chance of compromising the natural organic world -- Then I, and nearly everyone in the world (who isn't some religious nut perhaps,) should have no problem with it. Problem is, that scenario is nearly impossible to guarantee."

My problem with GMOs is that they're no longer participants in the biosphere. Any indigenous people who farmed did so with ordinary varieties that adapted and evolved along with the local flora and fauna in addition to the people eating them. Modern Iowa corn crops would be correctly called "biological dead zones". But urban areas and highways are too.

The specific answer depends on the crop we're talking about, but modern monoculture crops require truck-loads of fertilizers and often many "-cides". Again, they're generally less competitive than the natural flora that surround them under natural circumstances. Roundup ready plants have no advantage in the absence of Roundup. Suing the pants off small-scale farms was bad, but constituted a social problem and not environmental.

From a biological standpoint I've never agreed with the idea that engineered crops could be dangerously invasive. Evolution has been selecting for the most competitive genes for billions of years. We take a small number of genomes and alter them to spend more resources on making the stuff that humans want and copy the same thing over and over again. These plants are dependent on an umbilical cord from industrial society. I'm not worried about them turning into a monster and taking over the world. You'll be more effective limiting movement of existing plants out of their native environment to keep real invasive species out.

5/24/2010 3:08:35 PM

Quote :

"I'm not worried about them turning into a monster and taking over the world."

I'm not worried -- concerned, sure... but anyway, let's hope you're right.

Quote :

"I'll go ahead and generalize a little here. Environmentalists generally oppose or encourage technology based on qualitative aspects of the technology. The discomfort with GMOs and artificial life is based entirely on a surface-level evaluation of the acceptability of it. Much of the environmental movement has been pushing itself to irrelevance by the lack of any objective measure of environmental merit."

Well, at least you said it was a generalization. (big generalization, there.)

5/24/2010 3:22:37 PM