Science

Dr. J. Craig Venter
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Scientists have managed to decipher the human genome. Since the year 2000 two teams of scientists have been working on a progressively more accurate representation of the human genome and one group headed by J. Craig Venter had managed to sequence his own genome, including all the chromosomes from his parents. That was certainly quite a feat, but that, being as incredible as it was, is not the end all for this scientist. He believes that he now understands the genome so perfectly that he can create an artificial one. His firm, Synthetic Genomics along with the Venter Institute are now working on creating this artificial life. We have seen scientists that believe that they can create artificial machine life, but we are talking about biological life. If they succeed and do create biological life and it is intelligent, I wonder if it will consider Venter as god?

In a way cloning is almost like creating artificial biological life, with one big difference, it uses the materials from our bodies or the bodies of other animals. But we humans were not the first to clone. Yes I know that this sounds incredible, here we are sophisticated humans that are technologically advanced and yet, the lowly ant beat us to cloning. It turns out that the queen fireant can lay an egg that contains 100% of her DNA and no male fertilization is required. She clones herself. This is a selective process and she can lay normal eggs also that require males to fertilize them. On top of all this, she can lay eggs that are clones of the fathers of the offspring. It seems that the fireant has been given an ability that has eluded science until most recently.

Venter has found something, a microbe that has only a small amount of genes, only 482. His plan is to use this microbe and strip it down to the barest amount of genes that will allow it to still function. When he gets it down to that, he will then rebuild it to his own specs. The microbe we are talking about is Mycoplasma genitalium. Many of us know about it, because it causes urinary tract infections. When it does get stripped down to the barest minimum and then custom built, what will we have? Will we land up with some sort of a Frankenstein microbe that will be hard to kill? You never know what might happen when certain combinations of genes are inserted into it. Will it still have the proclivity to try and infect people and animals? I certainly hope not. Worse yet will the military try and use this organism as some sort of a bio weapon? If it is not lethal, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. After all, if you are in a fire fight with an enemy that has a severe case of diarrhea, that will certainly take their mind off of the battle.

In 2007 Dr. Venter told the Guardian newspaper in Britain, that he was indeed on the verge of creating artificial life. The director of the Canadian bioethics organization ETC Group had this to say, he said that Dr. Venter was making “a chassis on which you could build almost anything.” Dr. Venter has created a chromosome that is known as Mycoplasma laboratorium and was in the final step of the process. They were going to transplant it into a living cell where it was hoped that it would take control, creating a new life form. The new single cell organism is known as Synthia and has a minimal 381 genes, the smallest amount that is believed necessary for life to exist. Most scientists believe that this new life form may lead to others that can be programmed to do certain tasks, such as producing fuels, make medicines and even combat global warming.

Dr. Venter was asked by New Scientific Review in 2007, Assuming you can make synthetic bacteria, what will you do with them?" His reply to this question was that over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make.

When you think about it, his answer was extremely logical for an illogical event that we have been performing for hundreds of years and that is transferring pollutants from the ground, where they are not bothering anyone, to our atmosphere where they bother and even harm everyone. Quite frankly this is the first time that I have thought of things in this particular way. It was there all the time for us to see and yet I bet that most of us missed it. I am talking about this transfer process.

When the human genome had been deciphered, it was a proud day for scientists and the president. President Clinton walked into the East Room of the White House on June 26, 2000 and announced to a waiting crowd of people and reporters that it was a "day for the ages." He went on to say that the 3 billion DNA letters of the human genome had been read and put into their proper order. Craig Venter was there, he was standing on the President's right. No doubt he was already thinking of the next step, the creation of artificial biological life. Will it start out with a microbe and someday lead up to an intelligent being? Only time will tell and given the progress of technology it will probably be a given. Then we may have to start wondering if our creations have souls.