Thread: The world's first synthetic life form has been created.

Originally Posted by Aquanina

"Venter had already applied for patents on more than 300 genes, raising concerns that the company might claim intellectual rights to the building blocks of life."

What in the fuck?

Originally Posted by Catbus

I thought the same thing. I think calling it an android might be a better description, but I guess it kind of boils down to semantics for the most part.

An android is specifically something that is meant to act and look like a human.

I actually don't see any problem with this. I doubt they will create something that will wreak havoc with our ecosystem, and this is a necessary step in our evolution. The problem I see is in the patenting of genes, but that has been a problem since before this.

Originally Posted by Samael

I wouldn't mind playing god.

Here you go.

Originally Posted by juroara

? Since when has introducing an alien species into the environment ever been a good idea.

When has it not been? This has never been done before. If you can genetically modify algae to make it suck up more c02, that is all it's going to do. It's not going to suddenly mutate and destroy cities.

Originally Posted by Motumz

What in the fuck?

If he's taking patent on naturally occuring genes, I see the problem, but if he's building them up from the bottom with completely custom designed genecode, I think applying for patent should be possible. It's like taking patent on software.

This is going to be just like technology: it will make us happy, make things convenient and interesting, but then we'll all get lazy. So to speak.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

An android is specifically something that is meant to act and look like a human.

no...android as in a human with machine parts. I was just getting at combining synthetic with natural.

Weren't those cyborgs?

Edit:

Why the future doesn't need us (full essay)

by Bill Joy

Quoted from wikipedia:

William Nelson Joy (born November 8, 1954), commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim and Vaughan Pratt, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003. He is widely known for having written the essay "Why the future doesn't need us", where he expresses deep concerns over the development of modern technologies. He has two children, Hayden and Maddie.

In 2000 Joy gained notoriety with the publication of his article in Wired Magazine, "Why the future doesn't need us", in which he declared, in what some have described as a "neo-Luddite" position, that he was convinced that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would bring risks to humanity. He argued that intelligent robots would replace humanity, at the very least in intellectual and social dominance, in the relatively near future. He advocates a position of relinquishment of GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics) technologies, rather than going into an arms race between negative uses of the technology and defense against those negative uses (good nano-machines patrolling and defending against Grey Goo "bad" nano-machines).

additional article:

Creation of Earth's 1st Synthetic Life: Could There be Unintended Consequences?
(dailygalaxy.com)

Originally Posted by tkdyo

no...android as in a human with machine parts. I was just getting at combining synthetic with natural.

"An android is a robot[1] or synthetic organism[2] designed to look and act like a human. Until recently, androids have largely remained within the domain of science fiction, frequently seen in film and television."

... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android

Come on people, this is basic science fiction trivia!

The beginning of the end of our time, the new renaissance, the revolution in science, whatever.

He argued that intelligent robots would replace humanity, at the very least in intellectual and social dominance, in the relatively near future.

Heaven forbid there should be something on Earth smarter than humans. To prevent this, we should avoid making any new technological advances. We may get dumb that way, but at least we'll still be smarter than everyone else, and that's what counts.

This whole thing is basically a power grab anyway, and doesn't offer much in the way of actual advancement at this point. We already have species of fungus that can eat through just about anything in a landfill; but you can't patent an existing organism so there isn't much profit in that. I'll wait to be excited until we have Bladerunner caliber genetic engineering.

I think this story is pretty interesting. A lot of people don't understand what it is (I heard it hideously mischaracterised on the TV as a new form of life which could potentially cure cancer, solve hunger, and sort out the environment; it can't), but it certainly is one of the big steps towards being able to create such organisms.

What I essentially understand that they've done is they've started off which some basic chemicals, then created nucleotides out of them, and then glued the nucleotides together in a desired order to create a specific DNA strand. I could be wrong but apparently this strand synthesised all the basic proteins required for life?

They haven't created the entire cell though, but I don't think that's really important (there doesn't seem to be a problem with using existing cells); I'm not sure it would be particularly hard, either.

You'd have to create all the ribosomes and RNA bases and the cell membrane and things but I can't see that being too problematic.

And do you really think creating synthesized life to solve our environmental problems is intelligent?

Why not?

People who make statements like this don't tend to realise that things like crops and fruits and livestock barely existed before humans bred them, a few thousand years ago.

People who make statements like this don't tend to realise that things like crops and fruits and livestock barely existed before humans bred them, a few thousand years ago.

Corn was made using artifical selection.

Yes, all of those things were. That's what 'breeding' means.