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“Artificial Life Means Man Can Truly Play God”

Artificial Life Has Been Created Craig Venter is reporting his team has designed, synthesized, and assembled DNA, life itself, and transplanted it into a cell. The cell is alive, viable, and replicating. Below is a video report of this astounding announcement.

For audio interview with Craig Venter click here.

Some of the headlines and reports on this momentous achievement:

Official press release by the J. Craig Venter Institute (May 20, 2010):
First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell

Research abstract presented to ScienceMag.com (May 20, 2010):
Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome

News media reports:

MSNBC: It’s Alive! Synthetic Genome Blazes Trail for New Drugs and Biofuels

WSJ: Scientists Create Synthetic Organism

ABC: Artificial Life Means Man Can Truly Play God

The implications of this announcement are profound. The possibilities are literally endless. Organisms could be designed for use in medicine, in humans, to alter the Earth’s biosphere, even as biological weapons.  After development of custom made single cell organisms, multi-cell organisms could be created. Then larger organisms could be “invented” up to insect size, then animal size. Human parts could be created. Humans could be modified.

The basic idea: DNA is the software, the body is the hardware.  You program the DNA, the software, to operate the body, the hardware. Humanity continues to have more and more access to the software, which can then modify the hardware. The only limit will ultimately be humanity’s imagination.

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“Our imagination flies – we are its shadow on the earth.” – Vladimir Nabokov

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