At the head of the researchers who developed the artificial bacteria - Craig Venter, one of the leaders of the human genome project in the nineties. The applications are the development of algae that will absorb the carbon dioxide, the production of oil and hydrocarbons artificially by bacteria and more
Scientists have developed the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome. Now they hope to use this method to study the basic mechanism of life to engineer bacteria specifically designed to solve environmental or energy problems.
The study was published (May 20) on the Science Express website of the journal Science. The research team was headed by Craig Venter from the Craig Venter Institute - who became famous in the nineties when he headed Celera - a private company that performed the sequencing of the human genome, when the genome he scanned was his own. The team has already chemically synthesized a bacterium's genome and implanted the genome into another bacterium. Now, scientists are trying to combine the two methods together, to create what they call a "synthetic" cell, although only its genome is synthetic.
"This is the first synthetic cell ever made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is completely derived from the synthetic chromosome, which was created from four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, which started as information on the computer," Venter said.
This method will become a powerful tool that will allow us to do everything we want biology to do. We have a large variety of possible applications," he added. For example, the researchers plan to grow algae that can capture carbon dioxide and produce new hydrocarbons that can enter the refining process. They are also working on ways to speed up vaccine production. Making new chemical substances or food ingredients and purifying water are other possible benefits of the method, according to Venter.
In a study published in Science, the researchers synthesized the genome of the bacterium M. mycoides and added DNA sequences that serve as watermarks to distinguish the artificial genome from the natural one. Because today's machines can string together only small sequences of DNA letters at any given time, the researchers inserted the short sequences into yeast and used the yeast's DNA-repairing enzymes to join the strands together. They then transferred the sequences that had already reached medium size to E. coli bacteria and back to yeast. After three rounds of assembly, the researchers produced a genome containing one million base pairs.
The scientists then injected the genome of the artificial M. mycoides bacterium into another species of bacteria Mycoplasm capricolum. The new genome "kicked up: the cells into which it was inserted." Although 14 genes were removed or damaged during the transplant, they still looked like a normal M. mycoide bacterium that made only M. mycoide proteins. This is what the authors reported.
"This is an important step, both scientifically and philosophically. It changes the way we define life and how it works," Venter said.
As for the ethical issues regarding biological synthesis, Venter explained that his team requested a bioethical evaluation in the late XNUMXs and participated in many discussions on the subject. "I believe that this is the first time in science that the biological evaluation was done before the experiments. This is part of an ongoing process that we are motivating, and we are trying to ensure that science advances while maintaining the rules of ethics and that we have thought about everything we do and we also anticipate future consequences for this," he said.
For more information visit the Craig Venter Institute website
33 תגובות
I know it's hard for you to imagine causing things without using telepathy, but you should know that in the real world there are such things (and indeed telepathy does not exist).
For example - if someone hits your head with a hammer - he will give you a headache (and this - see it's a miracle! - without using telepathy at all!).
When you start selling your crap here you make me comment on it so people don't get confused.
I am responding to them up to the point where it is clear to me that any reasonable reader understood that you were talking nonsense and that there is no longer any need to continue the skirmish.
It seems to me that we have now reached this point in the current discussion.
did i make you What do I look like to you, a telepath?
Pettiness is also characteristic of you, just as I expected from you.
It's not called predicting - it's called causing.
Of course you need more than two neurons to understand the difference.
Just so you don't try, I don't really believe in the 'intelligent design' theory.
Just tell me now if in all response 25 I didn't foresee response 27 in advance!
The truth is that this is typical of you Mr. Rothschild.
Just tell me now if at the end of response 3 I didn't predict response 24 in advance!
The truth is that I foresaw this long before, so I already replied to her long before vanity and bad spirits started trolling here:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/while-public-praises-scientists-scientists-fault-public-media-1507094/#comment-234312
Success.. this sounds similar to me in its dangerous consequences
for the first atomic bomb that was produced in the United States
And now threatens the peace of the world, including the existence of Israel
Anyone who wants (Machal) to waste his time on my response 24, please..
Strange, an intelligent designer who succeeded in producing a living cell on Earth? Sounds weird.
the best source,
Look what happens from the non-organic fruits and vegetables,
And what happens to all the non-organic grain!
It's food that kills its creators!
The whole USA is going to get cancer, and thus it turns out that it is precisely the West that boasted, what it boasts about itself, that kills it (parable for the country that rebelled against the king the most; the king said: I want you not to kill them with my weapons, but with their weapons! And thus, a very painful stain !!!),
It's time to download a profile.
I have more to write, but, later.
Our Father Abraham
The synthetic man - you are mighty!
The synthetic man:
I suggest you read what I wrote in my article "How are you doing"
If they delete all the comments in which the word God is written
There will remain the reactions that are mostly to Einin's body without the philosophy
pointless
And actually this reaction will also disappear
Michael when it is necessary to say - they say
Thank you for the abundant scientific responses.
Thanks Jonathan too.
I don't know about you, but as I saw things years ago, I thought about creating a physically and mentally improved body and more, into which the inviting soul will enter that will pass from an ordinary primary body and thus it will actually be possible to prolong life for hundreds of years without living in the same body!!
The problem that immediately arises in such a way of life is the existence of the soul and on that everything will fall or rise, because without a soul there is nothing to do...and who is most concerned with souls? These are the religions from all over the world and people who practice mysticism!
But mysticism and religion don't help much beyond the idea of the existence of the soul that governs the body. Therefore, first of all, you need to build equipment to detect dead and living souls, I once recorded in a cemetery but with a cell phone and it's really not serious and what bothered me the most was the movement of vehicles and the loud noise (Trumpeldor) in the environment and as mentioned a device with low sensitivity, as well as a lack of focus..because according to my understanding a soul must contain a certain amount of physical memory (self-awareness) and therefore a detector should have components for detecting microscopic memory, with the ability to amplify (of the detector of course) several hundred times and more!
The question is how to identify a memory from a distance? What activity characterizes "living" biological memory?
So at the time I thought about examining the dying in which the soul is in the process of exiting and it is possible to "hunt" it when exiting (with a smile) but beyond different thoughts I did nothing about it!
It seems to me that there are unbalanced jumps in both directions.
One - which I have already mentioned - is the minor importance of the fact that they used an existing living cell.
This is no small thing.
This is not the result of laziness.
Despite many years of research, they still do not know how to produce a living cell synthetically, not even in a "semi-synthetic" way.
There are achievements in the direction but the final destination is still far away.
Another similar exaggeration is treating the subject as an achievement in creating "creatures to order".
This activity requires a thorough understanding of the relationship between genotype and phenotype.
This relationship is very far from cracking and I think it will remain so for many years to come.
We will certainly make progress in it (and we have already made a lot of progress), but the road is very long - perhaps endless.
The current project has hardly advanced us in understanding this connection.
We learned to create certain types of "creatures to order" when we deciphered the functions of genes in living organisms and copied these genes into other organisms.
The current achievement is more of a philosophical achievement at the level of "Here! We told you there is nothing mystical about DNA and it is all chemistry!" But this is something that scientists knew before. He was needed by the general public.
This achievement was achieved by the fact that the entire genome was created synthetically and no part of it was taken from other life forms.
Our ability to produce beneficial (for industry) or harmful (for terrorism) bacteria was not advanced by this project.
The innovation of the project is not in determining "what we know how to produce" but only in adding a new way to produce what we already knew how to produce anyway.
The exaggeration in the opposite direction is expressed in the claim that the genome of a living cell is not created here.
This is not true.
In other words, a genome of a living cell is created here that works and reproduces like all cells.
It is true that this is a relatively simple genome, but the simplicity of the genome is progress and there is nothing to dwarf the achievement.
The simplicity was required for technical reasons - simply to finish the work of assembly faster, but the discovery of the minimal genome that enables life is actually a (very small) step in deciphering the relationship between genotype and phenotype.
This is not just a random genome either, but one that was created by "plagiarism" from another living cell about which (since it was not created synthetically) no one would claim that it is not alive.
The whole process was great:
Take a living cell (of bacteria).
Reduce his DNA to a minimum by downloading parts of it and checking if the result is still alive.
You get a creature whose DNA section is removed, which damages its ability to live - this is the meaning of minimal DNA.
The genome obtained in these processes is reproduced - but this time with completely synthetic tools.
You take a cell that was alive before the genome was removed from it and insert the artificial genome into it.
You see that the result obtained is indeed a living cell - and not just any living cell, but one that functions like the one whose DNA was copied and not like the one from which the DNA-free cell was taken.
yes god no god
A great achievement for a person.
A huge and important achievement but not final
Response to laymen.
They did manage to create functional DNA from chemical sources. This is an amazing achievement and a huge step forward.
But since they used an existing biological infrastructure (a type of bacterial species) it cannot be claimed that an artificial transition from chemistry to biology was made. That is, creating life from 0
It is still a huge achievement since they actually managed to produce a type of completely artificial chemical bacteria that actually replaces and elevates the biological infrastructure on which it was implanted.
The practical meaning of this achievement is that life can literally be programmed in this way. That is to plan in advance what will grow from primary cells.
Apparently it is still far from happening, but theoretically it is possible to program in this way, for example, a person with 4 legs... or with two brains and 4 eyes...
Those who are interested in getting another perspective on defining life and creating life can read the books "Angle View"
http://www.steimatzky.co.il/Steimatzky/Pages/Product.aspx?ProductID=11784817
I worry from the moment a creature (however simple) like this is released into the wild,
In the end, the technology will spread, companies are big enough
They will produce "biological machines" that will pretend to solve all kinds of problems - and history
of the African bees in America and the giant toads in Australia
(Not to mention "Jurassic Park"..) Repeat herself - and that's more
Before the uses that armies and terrorists can make of technology
this.
A little proportion, and enough with the banter.
The line between a biological machine and a living creature is not sharp. A bacterium fulfills certain characteristics of life, but does not fulfill other characteristics.
Beyond that, with all the importance of the scientific achievement, we are talking about the creation of a relatively simple artificial genome - and not of a living cell.
Not every scientific achievement should be a tool for contradicting religions.
It turned from something temporary to permanent and the site became a scientific site,
Find a collision and it's no longer funny but sad and stupid.
Give us science and stop bashing.
If you find out who is on the other side of the fence,
and answers you with all his might (and I mean both sides),
You will be disappointed to find out that we all here love science and despite
This is some who think this way and some who think differently and scientific thinking
Should be on the one hand critical and on the other hand free.
This is the essence of science and this is the essence of the free spirit.
good day everybody.
To the last sane - you are right, but as in religion, in science too there are righteous people who came to contribute their energy to the advancement of science.
For the rest - to say that the finding disproves the existence of a divine being is a display of ignorance in everything related to theology. There are quite a few interpretations among philosophers in matters of religion regarding the essence of the Almighty, some see Him "in the small details", others see Him "here with us sitting on high" and there are also those (like me and the Rambam) who see Him (or whatever) beyond the ability to perceive Ours (modesty, as Einstein put it), if the ant, that if a person stands in front of her she will not notice him as such, she decides to step on his foot, and still not notice that it is a human foot, this does not mean that a person does not exist even though for her he does not exist. Her structure and senses limit her to a certain reality where the center is the queen of the nest. We are limited to the wonderful ability to understand things in our reality in a relative way, and therefore understand that this is our limitation.
See for yourself what kind of people you are, that is, if God comes and explains to you how he performed this or that miracle, you will immediately say that if this is so, he is not God at all but only an impostor...
But you can relax, the entire science industry today is based on degrees issued to anyone who complies with the rules of the game of publishing articles, etc., a war on huge budgets for research that are set aside from huge sums of money that usually drive the global pharmaceutical industry (think, to speak as simply as the human body , there are millions of diseases and even more medicines), so here is another bombastic announcement. Like in commercials, or in contrast to "A Star Is Born" - the prophecy fulfills itself and the punishment for stupidity is that you stay in it.
Michael, it's true that if you're very precise then you won't really create a new life out of nothing, but it's really close. Note that within a few generations nothing remains of the original cell that was only used as a temporary template and everything the new cells contained originated in the synthetic genome and in fact the new cells are very different from the aforementioned "transitional" cell.
From a scientific point of view, there is no great achievement here, but like Dolly the sheep, this achievement will be recorded in the pages of history because of its philosophical implications. They show here that in order to create life all that is needed is molecules and chemistry. And there is no need for any mysterious or divine spark.
It is also good for military uses in developing more effective biological weapons…
Huge economic potential. As well as technology that in the wrong hands can be very dangerous. Biological engineering in general can be dangerous, but it has been with us for several decades (not many, but not very little either) and we have not yet seen any major terrorist activity from this direction - if at all. not that I know. Here things are taken to another level when you can really choose and create any material from the shell of a cell. I see the main potential as a start in the field of energy and in the very distant future I see green people who are ordinary people like us only with chloroplasts inside the skin cells.
Friends:
It is a beautiful and important achievement but it is still not fully a life creation.
Only the genome was produced here synthetically, but the cell body was taken ready-made.
Nobel Prize at the next ceremony or what?
Turns out you don't have to have a god to create life, hahaha 🙂
*Avi - the word "to use" is doubled in the first paragraph.
Finally!
Those who followed the discussions with the creationists heard from me more than once about the mycoplasma labortorium.
See for example
https://www.hayadan.org.il/worm-like-marine-animal-providing-2506082/#comment-61051
https://www.hayadan.org.il/first-dna-molecule-made-almost-entirely-of-artificial-parts-2107082/#comment-66641
https://www.hayadan.org.il/rna-the-immortal-molecule-1801092/#comment-163028
https://www.hayadan.org.il/what-is-evolution-1002094/#comment-172196
https://www.hayadan.org.il/we-owe-it-all-to-comets-1205095/#comment-216025
https://www.hayadan.org.il/believers-estimates-of-gods-beliefs-are-more-egocentric-0612099/#comment-256683
https://www.hayadan.org.il/the-importance-of-honoring-darwin-1202101/#comment-261618
Of course, the completion of the project will not calm them down because nothing will.
I've already had the chance to hear from a biographer I spoke with the claim that evolution will be considered proven in his eyes only if they manage to build a living cell out of nothing.
I told him that in my opinion - when it happens - he will see it as a confirmation of the intelligent planning.
So it's true - they haven't created a living cell here yet, only a genome, but the principle is similar.
Well, in short, who else is stupid to think that there is some kind of God, creating life from inanimate matter is a contradiction to all creationists and intellectuals of all kinds, and it is desirable that they start memorizing that "the foundation of the foundations and the pillar of wisdom for knowledge and to understand that there is solid ground for the theory of evolution"
If the genome can take over a real cell and make it produce what we want, then in fact it is somewhat similar to a stem cell that differentiates according to coding... only here the cell changes existing cells but the result is the same result!
What would prevent, for example, a synthetic cell from turning "basic" cells (they will surely invent such cells to use as working material) into muscle cells or kidney cells and in the future into a whole organism such as a liver, etc.!
Now when I look at Blizovsky in the small picture, the thought of synthetic hair comes up hahahaha, the truth is that I need it too, like most men!