Group

Here are older (1999-2004) articles in descending date order (oldest first)
on the minimum number of genes necessary for life. Some of these articles
are still webbed (indicated by a URL), but they are still posted here to keep
these articles together. There is inevitably a lot of redundancy in these
articles, as they are all about the same thing.

Here are some quotes that summarise the main point, the minimum
number of genes for an organism to exist is 265+ and may be many more,
given that this bacterium with the simplest genome, Mycoplasma
genitalium, is a parasite to start with (i.e. it depends on its host's genes to
survive), and the 265+ minimum number of genes that they got down to,
did not include things like "the ability to resist heat", which I would have
thought is hardly a luxury in the real world:

"Scientists busy trying to map all the genes in creatures ranging
from bacteria to humans think they are on the verge of figuring out
how to build an artificial life form, from genes. ... Their guinea pig
is a tiny bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. It lives in the
human genital tract and lungs, causing no known disease, but has
the distinction of having fewer genes than any other organism
mapped so far. ... just 470. ... Not only is Mycoplasma genitalium
small and easy to study, but it has a close relative-- Mycoplasma
pneumoniae. And while M. genitalium has 470 genes, M.
pneumoniae has the same 470 genes, plus 200 extra ones. "So we
decided these genes were not essential to life," Venter ... said.
Venter's team started working backward-- cutting out some genes
to see if the organism would still function. ... One by one, they cut
out mycoplasma genes to see which ones the organism could live
without. ... "How many genes can call in sick before you no longer
have a living cell?" ... they got M. genitalium down to about 300
essential genes." ("Scientists look at building artificial life,"
CNN/Reuters, January 24, 1999)

"To answer how many genes are enough for the most stripped-
down form of life, Fraser and her team set to work on a parasite
called Mycoplasma genitalium. With 470 genes, it was the smallest
genome known ... The TIGR scientists started knocking out
Mycoplasma's genes: the researchers slipped into the parasite bits
of DNA that act like a toddler sneaking onto your word processor.
The rogue DNA messes up a gene so badly - inserting "gaga" into
"ta-ta" to produce the incomprehensible "tagagata," for instance-
that the gene, like the document after the tot gets a hold of it, is
destroyed. Then the scientists observed which knockouts
mycoplasma survived. Under ideal lab conditions, in which
mycoplasma is kept warm and well fed, TIGR discovered that
about 170 of the bug's genes are superfluous. Knock'em out, and
the little guy lives on. But just because the bug can survive without
one gene doesn't mean it can live without all 170. To discover a
truly "minimal gene set" for life, the researchers would have to
string genes together, one by one. Eventually, they would reach a
tipping point, where adding one more gene would turn nonliving
chemicals into life itself. .... One day a TIGR scientist will drop
gene number 297 into a test tube, then number 298, then 299...and
presto: what was not alive a moment ago will be alive now. The
creature will be as simple as life can be. But it will still be life. And
humans will have made it, in an ordinary glass tube, from off-the-
shelf chemicals." (Begley S., "How Low Can You Go?: Seeking
the Fewest Genes Necessary for Life," Newsweek, February 22,
1999, p.50)

"Using the super-computers and gene sequencing techniques used
to decipher the human genetic code, Dr Venter and his scientific
colleagues have worked out a blueprint for a living organism.
Using artificial DNA, Dr Venter believes that it is possible to build
up a DNA molecule, gene-by-gene, that will form the foundation
for a synthetic lifeform. He and his team worked out the basic
number of genes necessary to sustain life after dissecting the DNA
of a simple bacterium, mycoplasma genitalium, which is found in
the human genital tract. The scientists discovered that as few as
350 of the bacteria's 470 genes were necessary to sustain its life.
They think that now they know the minimum number of genes
which will make a cell "work", they can build the first artificial
living organism - something able to eat, move, grow and
reproduce." (Moore T. & Hanlon M., "The New Genesis," The
Daily Express, 11 September, 1999)

"Scientists trying to define the very essence of life -- at least on the
genetic level -- said ... they had found the secret, and it was about
300 genes. The team at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR)
tore down the tiniest known living organism, Mycoplasma
bacterium, and found its essential genes. `The analysis suggests
that 265 to 350 of the 480 protein-coding genes of M. genitalium
are essential under laboratory growth conditions, including about
100 genes of unknown function,' Clyde Hutchison and colleagues
at TIGR wrote in their report, published in the journal Science. ....
Mycoplasma genitalium lives in the human genital tract and lungs,
causing no known disease, but has fewer genes than any other
organizm mapped so far. ... Their study can point scientists to what
they should be looking for in an `essential' gene. .... One by one,
they cut out genes to see which ones the organizm could live
without. .... Most interesting is the large number of genes that are
necessary, but about which the researchers have no idea what they
do. `Our results imply that of the 111 genes of unknown function
that have not been disrupted in our experiments, the majority are
essential,' they wrote. `The presence of so many genes of unknown
function among the essential genes of the simplest known cell
suggests that all the basic molecular mechanisms underlying
cellular life may not yet have been described.' Mycoplasma
genitalium lives in the human genital tract and lungs, causing no
known disease, but has fewer genes than any other organizm
mapped so far. .. just 480. That made it a good model for figuring
out precisely which genes are essential for life, and which ones
code for extra value such as having blue eyes or the ability to resist
heat." (Fox M., "Scientists Whittle Bug Down to Minimum
Genes," Yahoo/Reuters, December 9, 1999)

"A team of geneticists has come close to determining the minimum
number of genes required for life to arise, an advance that could
ultimately allow scientists to design and create living organisms
from scratch. ... the researchers ... concluded that about 300 genes
are needed for a candidate life form to pass for `alive'--a state
generally defined by an ability to reproduce and to respond to the
environment. The discovery of what appears to be the simplest
recipe for making a living thing ... could shed new light on the
origins of life and the myriad ways that biology has cooked itself
up since evolution first stirred the primordial soup. The genetic
research that has prompted all this soul-searching was relatively
prosaic. It involved the use of molecular tools to `knock out'
hundreds of genes, one at a time, in two of the world's simplest
one-celled organisms--Mycoplasma genitalium and M.
pneumoniae, both of which have had their entire genetic codes
spelled out. By seeing which knockouts were lethal to the
organisms and which were not, the scientists came up with a
provisional tally of the genes that are essential to life. The
researchers had to take into account that many genes are redundant.
A microbe may do fine when either of two redundant genes is
knocked out, so long as the other is there to take over, but that does
not mean that both are dispensable. By combining their knockout
data with a correction factor for redundancy, the group concluded
that 265 to 350 of M. genitalium's 480 genes are essential for life
under laboratory conditions. ... . One point that became apparent to
the Minimal Genome team is that the definition of life is relative.
An organism can get by with just a few genes in an environment
that provides everything it needs, such as a warm, wellstocked
laboratory dish. Try to raise that piece of life in the back yard,
however, and it's not going to rank as a life form anymore." (Weiss
R., "Genetic Find Could Lead to Creation of Life From Scratch in
Lab," Washington Post, December 10, 1999; Page A08)

See also tagline where Hugh Ross points out *the* problem for evolution,
"Anyone proposing a naturalistic interpretation for life's origin must be
able to explain how 256+ genes, plus all the other chemical components
and structures for survival and reproduction put themselves together via
mindless, purposeless, non-organic processes."


I will reference the webbed archive of this post on my "Articles posted to
CED" page (http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/cedartic.html) so that
search engines like Google can find it.

As before, I assume that these are covered by the "fair use" provisions of
international and USA copyright law, being distributed without profit for
scientific and educational purposes.

Steve

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Scientists look at building artificial life

CNN

January 24, 1999 Web posted at: 12:41 AM EST (0541 GMT)

ANAHEIM, California (Reuters) -- Scientists busy trying to map all the
genes in creatures ranging from bacteria to humans think they are on the
verge of figuring out how to build an artificial life form, from genes.

Just as Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein used bits of corpses to make a
monster, Dr. J. Craig Venter hopes to salvage DNA from dead bacteria to
construct his artificial bug.

"Shelley would have loved this," Venter laughed when asked about the
comparison.

Their guinea pig is a tiny bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. It lives
in the human genital tract and lungs, causing no known disease, but has
the distinction of having fewer genes than any other organism mapped so
far.

While humans have about 80,000 genes, this bug gets along fine with just
470.

That makes it a good model for figuring out precisely which genes are
essential for life, and which ones code for extra value such as having blue
eyes or the ability to resist heat.

"We are attempting to understand what the definition of life is," Venter, of
Rockville, Maryland-based Celera Genomics Corporation, told a news
conference. "We are trying to understand what the minimum set of genes
is."

Not only is Mycoplasma genitalium small and easy to study, but it has a
close relative-- Mycoplasma pneumoniae. And while M. genitalium has
470 genes, M. pneumoniae has the same 470 genes, plus 200 extra ones.

"So we decided these genes were not essential to life," Venter, who will
explain the project to the annual meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, said.

Venter's team started working backward-- cutting out some genes to see if
the organism would still function. They did this using transposons, which
are genes that act specifically to cut up other genes.

One by one, they cut out mycoplasma genes to see which ones the
organism could live without.

This was harder than it sounds. Organisms have backup systems. "If you
knock out one gene, you don't know if there is some other gene there that
is serving the purpose," Venter said.

"How many genes can call in sick before you no longer have a living
cell?"

Nonetheless, they got M. genitalium down to about 300 essential genes.

This could form the basis for trying to put together an artificial M.
genitalium, Venter reckons. Perhaps it could be built base pair by base pair
from the nucleotides that make up DNA, which in turn makes up the
genes.

DNA is made up of nucleotides, which join together in pairs, called base
pairs, in ladder-like strands twisted into a double helix.

The nucleotides might come from a "whole bucket of M. genitalium",
Venter said. The cells could be burst open and the raw genetic material
taken out to construct the new bacterium.

Even if they could make a new life, Venter's team still might not
understand just what they did, because life is much more complex than
they thought. It had been hoped that after a few organisms had been
sequenced, many genes would arise that every living creature has in
common.

After all, everything has many of the same basic functions -- processing
food, respiring, building cell membranes to keep themselves together.

But it turns out that different creatures use different genes for these same
functions.

"Fifty percent of the genes in every genome is new to science and we don't
know what they do," Venter said.

The same is true even of Mycoplasma's 300 basic genes. "One hundred of
these we, as scientists, have no clue as to what they do. It's very
humbling," Venter said.

But there are types of genes that are essential to all life. Venter says three
types have been found so far.

They govern extremely basic cell processes involving the transport of
potassium, calcium and phosphorus.

Before he goes any further, Venter said he wants advice from experts on
ethics and religion. "We are asking whether it is ethical to synthetically
make life," Venter told reporters.

"We think this discussion is totally worthwhile ... because it gets down to
the definition of what life is," he said.

Venter left the nonprofit Institute for Genomic Research last year to join
Norwalk, Connecticut-based Perkin Elmer Corp. and form Celera. They
are using privately developed technology to sequence, or map, all the
human genes.

Copyright 1999 Reuters. All rights reserved. [...]

(c) 1999 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved. [...]

["Scientists look at building artificial life," CNN/Reuters, January 24,
1999]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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NEWSWEEK, February 22, 1999 Page 50

SCIENCE

How Low Can You Go?

Seeking the Fewest Genes Necessary for Life

By SHARON BEGLEY

LIKE A REFRAIN THEY CAN'T SILENCE, there's a question that's
simple for scientists to pose but maddeningly difficult to answer: what is
life? Yes, biologists can list the qualities of being alive - the basic ability
to reproduce and to derive energy from the world outside, the rudimentary
ability to grow and to excrete waste. But that dry recitation is deeply
unsatisfying, so much so that many people - even a few scientists - cling to
the romantic idea that there must be a vital spark, something that cannot be
reduced to mere biochemicals, that imbues inanimate matter with the
breath of life. That notion, however, may be doomed. Researchers are on
the brink of determining the minimum number of genes that life needs to
live. And to really prove their case, the scientists from The Institute for
Genomic Research (TIGR) might have to do what many researchers have
envisioned, what some have warned about, but what only science fiction
has dared: they might have to create life in a test tube.

It isn't called "tiger" for nothing. TIGR, in Rockville, Md., has hunted
down more genomes than anyone else, and once it catches sight of its prey
it is relentless in pursuit. TIGR founder J. Craig Venter figured out, in the
mid-1990s, a speedy way to discover the entire genetic repertoire - called
the genome - of a bacterium, and last year he vowed to beat an army of
govermnent-funded scientists to the biggest quarry ever: the human
genome. In the meantime, TIGR has sequenced the genomes of 11
microorganisms, including bacteria that cause syphilis, ulcers and Lyme
disease. "The question that came out of this," says TIGR president Claire
Fraser, "is, are all these genes essential?' Or are some the biological
equivalent of magazine blow-in cards, superfluous bits that can be pulled
out without crippling the main product?

To answer how many genes are enough for the most stripped-down form
of life, Fraser and her team set to work on a parasite called Mycoplasma
genitalium. With 470 genes, it was the smallest genome known (humans
have an estimated 80,000 genes). The TIGR scientists started knocking out
Mycoplasma's genes: the researchers slipped into the parasite bits of DNA
that act like a toddler sneaking onto your word processor. The rogue DNA
messes up a gene so badly - inserting "gaga" into "ta-ta" to produce the
incomprehensible "tagagata," for instance-that the gene, like the document
after the tot gets a hold of it, is destroyed. Then the scientists observed
which knockouts mycoplasma survived. Under ideal lab conditions, in
which mycoplasma is kept warm and well fed, TIGR discovered that about
170 of the bug's genes are superfluous. Knock'em out, and the little guy
lives on.

But just because the bug can survive without one gene doesn't mean it can
live without all 170. To discover a truly "minimal gene set" for life, the
researchers would have to string genes together, one by one. Eventually,
they would reach a tipping point, where adding one more gene would turn
nonliving chemicals into life itself. Struck by the prospect of venturing
into "dangerous territory," Venter says, "we stopped our experiment. We
thought we should have ethical input before creating life in the lab."

They got in touch with bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of
Pennsylvania. Caplan assembled 20 theologians, philosophers, lawyers
and ethicists to "get out in front of the science." They expect to issue their
verdict in a few months. "We are trying to answer whether creating life in
a test tube would violate religious prohibitions, and whether it could be
misused," Caplan says. There will likely be many minimal genomes - sets
of genes that produce life - so it's not as if TIGR will uncover the formula
of life. But it will probably find one formula that works. "I think what they
discover will be a threat to the view that there is some magic, secret,
outside force creating this thing called life," Caplan says. One day a TIGR
scientist will drop gene number 297 into a test tube, then number 298, then
299...and presto: what was not alive a moment ago will be alive now. The
creature will be as simple as life can be. But it will still be life. And
humans will have made it, in an ordinary glass tube, from off-the-shelf
chemicals. There will be no going back.

With THOMAS HAYDEN

[Begley S., "How Low Can You Go?: Seeking the Fewest Genes
Necessary for Life," Newsweek, February 22, 1999, p.50]
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THE EXPRESS

11 September, 1999

THE NEW GENESIS
BY TOBY MOORE IN NEW YORK
AND MICHAEL HANLON IN LONDON

[...]

DR VENTER: Discovered how to create a living organism

A BLUEPRINT for the creation of life is about to be unveiled by
scientists.

The mystery of creation, which took nature hundreds of millions of years,
may now be accomplished by Man within five years.

A leading genetics researcher has worked out the process to create a
synthetic bacterium. Scientists say it is only a short step to the creation of
much more complex lifeforms.

It raises the prospect of humans ultimately being able to create new species
of plants and animals. Dr Craig Venter revealed at a US science
conference in January that he planned to investigate the possibilities of
making bacteria using artificial DNA. The production of a written
blueprint for creating a synthetic organism so rapidly will confound
sceptics.

It will make human beings the creators of other living forms far sooner
than expected, possibly just a few years into the new millennium.

The blueprint is now being submitted to the prestigious journal Science
and will astound the world of genetic research.

Professor David Magnus, a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania's
Centre for Bioethics, said that it would be "a short step" from making a
basic bacteria to creating animals and plants.

The ethics expert, a world authority on the new genetic sciences, has
called for a measured response to the breakthrough, which will renew the
debate surrounding genetic engineering.

"I'm hoping that we will avoid the hysterical tone that exists in discussions
about cloning or genetically modified foods," he said.

The work appears to have the blessing of much of the religious
establishment, which has reacted with caution to the development.

When Dr Venter first outlined his plans, Bishop John Jukes, a Catholic
spokesman on bio-ethics, said that his Church would object to any
deliberate design "intended to supplant God the Creator".

But yesterday, Dr Helen Watt, a philosopher and bio-ethicist working for
the Catholic Church in London, said that "provided the motivation is
right", then creating a bacterium is acceptable.

"God creates human beings with intelligence and if they can use this
intelligence to create a bacterium then that's fine," she said.

But she said the Catholic Church would not countenance the creation of
higher lifeforms - or even of bacteria if the motivation was to do harm.

"In itself it's an interesting piece of scientific research. But it depends on
your motivation. If you are trying to prove the non-existence of God that's
one thing, but if you are just carrying out an experiment that is quite
another.

"Obviously if you were trying to create bacteria for germ warfare that
would be very wrong."

She added: "If it's just a bacteria, that's fine. But it's a long way from a
bacteria to a human being."

Prof Magnus said: "In the end, when we weighed the risks and the benefits
of the technology, what we concluded was that you couldn't draw a line
and say this technology should never be developed.

"It's got the risk for abuse and misuse as well as the potential for great
benefit, both scientifically and technologically. But we have to proceed
cautiously and I think that's what's being done."

Like a modern-day Dr Frankenstein, Dr Venter hopes to use parts salvaged
from dead bacteria to create his artificial bug.

He says the synthetic "designer bacteria" could have positive applications.
Scientists could learn how to produce customised genes that could help
build organisms for eating radioactive waste or cleaning up after oil spills,
for example.

They could also be programmed to produce a whole new generation of
powerful drugs.

Dr Venter runs the Institute for Genomic Research, a private company
based in Maryland which is taking part in the international Human
Genome Project the unravelling of human DNA.

Using the super-computers and gene sequencing techniques used to
decipher the human genetic code, Dr Venter and his scientific colleagues
have worked out a blueprint for a living organism. Using artificial DNA,
Dr Venter believes that it is possible to build up a DNA molecule, gene-
by-gene, that will form the foundation for a synthetic lifeform.

He and his team worked out the basic number of genes necessary to
sustain life after dissecting the DNA of a simple bacterium, mycoplasma
genitalium, which is found in the human genital tract.

The scientists discovered that as few as 350 of the bacteria's 470 genes
were necessary to sustain its life.

They think that now they know the minimum number of genes which will
make a cell "work", they can build the first artificial living organism -
something able to eat, move, grow and reproduce.

Dr Venter says that his discussions with the world's major religions had
not deterred him.

"They have said there is nothing in their scriptures to prevent us from
making life artificially," he told a meeting of scientists.

A 15-strong panel of religious leaders and philosophers, set up under the
chairmanship of Prof Magnus, will assess the ethical implications.

"There are some serious implications," Professor Magnus conceded. "A
major worry is the effect on the environment of unleashing something
totally new into nature.

"The second concern is that this makes possible biological weapons
research and especially biological terrorism in a way that hadn't existed
before.

"It becomes possible to have designer organisms from scratch or where all
you need is the published sequences of smallpox to artificially create it,
instead of having to break into somewhere to steal cultures."

Prof Magnus said that his committee believed official regulation should
not precede developments, but run alongside.

The late 20th Century was about discovering genes and tinkering with
them. The next century, he predicted, "is going to be about designing
them". © Express Newspapers Ltd

[Moore T. & Hanlon M., "The New Genesis," The Daily Express, 11
September, 1999]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Yahoo!

Thursday December 9 [1999] 2:29 PM ET

Scientists Whittle Bug Down to Minimum Genes

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists trying to define the very essence of
life -- at least on the genetic level -- said Thursday they had found the
secret, and it was about 300 genes. The team at the Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR) tore down the tiniest known living organism,
Mycoplasma bacterium, and found its essential genes.

"The analysis suggests that 265 to 350 of the 480 protein-coding genes of
M. genitalium are essential under laboratory growth conditions, including
about 100 genes of unknown function," Clyde Hutchison and colleagues at
TIGR wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.

The scrawny bacterium may also help shed some light on other mysteries
of life. The existence of 111 unknown but essential genes suggested that
biologists did not yet understand everything about basic life functions,
they added.

Mycoplasma genitalium lives in the human genital tract and lungs, causing
no known disease, but has fewer genes than any other organizm mapped so
far. While humans have between 80,000 and 140,000 genes, this bug gets
along fine with just 480.

That made it a good model for figuring out precisely which genes are
essential for life, and which ones code for extra value such as having blue
eyes or the ability to resist heat.

J. Craig Venter, who founded TIGR and who now heads Rockville,
Maryland-based Celera Genomics Corporation, said his experiment was
redefining life in terms of the genome -- the collection of all a creature's
genes.

Their study can point scientists to what they should be looking for in an
"essential" gene.

Mycoplasma genitalium has a close relative, Mycoplasma pneumonia, that
has the same 480 genes as M. genitalium has, plus 200 extra ones.

"So we decided these genes were not essential to life," Venter told a news
conference earlier this year at which he described the experiment.

One by one, they cut out genes to see which ones the organizm could live
without. They did that using transposons, which are genes that act
specifically to cut up other genes.

The number was not exact, but close enough, they said. Most interesting is
the large number of genes that are necessary, but about which the
researchers have no idea what they do.

"Our results imply that of the 111 genes of unknown function that have not
been disrupted in our experiments, the majority are essential," they wrote.

"The presence of so many genes of unknown function among the essential
genes of the simplest known cell suggests that all the basic molecular
mechanisms underlying cellular life may not yet have been described."

They suggested the next step would be creating an artificial bacterium,
based on these essential genes. The first step in such an experiment would
be building an artificial chromosome to carry the genes.

In October, a team at Chromos Molecular Systems, based in British
Columbia, said they had done just that. They said they spliced the artificial
chromosome into mice, which passed it onto their progeny.

[...]

[Fox M., "Scientists Whittle Bug Down to Minimum Genes,"
Yahoo/Reuters, December 9, 1999]
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Washington Post

[...]

Genetic Find Could Lead to Creation of Life From Scratch in Lab

By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 10, 1999; Page A08

A team of geneticists has come close to determining the minimum number
of genes required for life to arise, an advance that could ultimately allow
scientists to design and create living organisms from scratch.

Tired of waiting for philosophers to answer the question "What is life?"
the researchers took a scientific approach and concluded that about 300
genes are needed for a candidate life form to pass for "alive"--a state
generally defined by an ability to reproduce and to respond to the
environment.

The discovery of what appears to be the simplest recipe for making a
living thing, described in today's issue of the journal Science, could shed
new light on the origins of life and the myriad ways that biology has
cooked itself up since evolution first stirred the primordial soup.

But of greater interest to ethicists, who have been tracking the Minimal
Genome Project since its inception two years ago, the new research may
enable scientists to engineer life in the laboratory for the first time from
essential chemical ingredients--not by altering existing organisms, as
genetic engineers do today.

That ability could be liberating or could sow seeds of destruction, said J.
Craig Venter of Celera Genomics in Rockville, the senior scientist on the
new report. Novel cells could be designed to clean up toxic wastes with
unprecedented efficiency, he said. Or they could be programmed to serve
as horrendous biological weapons.

For people who already fear that gene researchers are playing God, the
prospect of scientists actually becoming creators may seem downright
blasphemous, Venter acknowledged. That's why he and his Minimal
Genome colleagues--most of whom are at the Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR), a nonprofit center he founded in Rockville--have agreed
not to attempt a replay of Genesis until more public discussion takes place.

But an accompanying Science report by a 25-member ethics panel,
commissioned by TIGR through an unrestricted grant, finds no compelling
reason to stop researchers from making new life forms if the scientific and
ethical implications are carefully weighed.

The creation of new, free-living life forms "does not violate any
fundamental moral precepts or boundaries, but does raise questions that
are essential to consider before the technology advances further,"
according to the panel, led by Mildred K. Cho of the Stanford University
Center for Biomedical Ethics.

Among the metaphysical questions Cho and her colleagues want
considered: Is it appropriate to define life in narrow, scientific terms, or is
there a spiritual component to being alive? There is a "serious danger," the
team warns, that the creation of new life forms will be "perceived by the
public as proving that life is reducible to, or nothing more than, DNA."

On a more practical level, the team expresses concern about the ecological
harm that may result from releasing novel life forms into the environment.

The genetic research that has prompted all this soul-searching was
relatively prosaic. It involved the use of molecular tools to "knock out"
hundreds of genes, one at a time, in two of the world's simplest one-celled
organisms--Mycoplasma genitalium and M. pneumoniae, both of which
have had their entire genetic codes spelled out.

By seeing which knockouts were lethal to the organisms and which were
not, the scientists came up with a provisional tally of the genes that are
essential to life.

The researchers had to take into account that many genes are redundant. A
microbe may do fine when either of two redundant genes is knocked out,
so long as the other is there to take over, but that does not mean that both
are dispensable.

By combining their knockout data with a correction factor for redundancy,
the group concluded that 265 to 350 of M. genitalium's 480 genes are
essential for life under laboratory conditions. By contrast, human cells
have about 80,000 genes each--a large number of which help the body's
trillions of cells communicate with one another.

Many of the 300 essential genes identified in the new study were already
familiar to scientists because of their established roles in energy
generation, reproduction or other basic functions. Surprisingly, however,
about 100 of the genes are complete unknowns, and their contributions to
life could prove fascinating, Venter said.

Biologists hope someday to make new organisms by loading essential
genes onto artificial chromosomes (already under development in many
laboratories) and placing those chromosomes inside real or synthetic cells.
By adding extra genes, the cells might be made to secrete human
medicines or break down radioactive wastes more efficiently than those
now being used for such purposes, which are made by modifying existing
cells.

One point that became apparent to the Minimal Genome team is that the
definition of life is relative. An organism can get by with just a few genes
in an environment that provides everything it needs, such as a warm,
wellstocked laboratory dish. Try to raise that piece of life in the back yard,
however, and it's not going to rank as a life form anymore.

That relativistic view could introduce a new twist to debates about
abortion, embryo research and the question of when life begins, said
Arthur Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania ethicist who served on the
TIGR ethics panel. If a frozen embryo, created in a laboratory dish, has
never been placed in a womb where it can live, is it alive? Such questions
cry out for more than a scientific answer, Caplan said. "Ultimately," he
said, "the definitive debate over what life is and when life begins is up to
us as a society."

(c) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

[Weiss R., "Genetic Find Could Lead to Creation of Life From Scratch in
Lab," Washington Post, December 10, 1999; Page A08]
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BBC

Friday, 10 December, 1999, 04:34 GMT Scientists call for life creation
debate

[...]

By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

Scientists have found the essence of life - at least on a genetic level - and it
comes down to about 300 genes.

US researchers think this is the minimum set of molecular instructions
required to build a living organism.

It would clearly be creating a new species of life that does not exist

Dr Craig Venter

It has been suggested that this could be tested by trying to synthesise an
artificial bacterium in the lab - for scientists to create life from non-living
chemicals.

The idea is currently the subject of an ethical review and the scientists
involved say no attempt will be made to proceed with the daring
experiment until there has been a full and public debate.

The prospect of "scientists playing God", as some will undoubtedly see it,
is bound to provoke some fierce arguments.

Tiny organism

A team from the Institute for Genomic Research (Tigr) in Maryland
pareddown the tiniest-known living organism, a bacterium called
Mycoplasma genitalium, to its essential genes.

M. genitalium is the smallest-known bacterium

"The analysis suggests that 265 to 350 of the 480 protein-coding genes of
M. genitalium are essential under laboratory growth conditions, including
about 100 genes of unknown function," the Tigr scientists have reported in
the journal Science.

The existence of 111 unknown but essential genes suggests that biologists
do not yet understand everything about basic life functions, they add.

M. genitalium lives in the human genital tract and lungs, causes no known
disease, but has fewer genes than any other known living thing. Humans
have between 80,000 and 140,000 genes, but M. genitalium has just 480.

Dr Craig Venter, founder of Tigr and now head of the Celera Genomics
Corporation, said the study was redefining life in terms of the genome, the
collection of all a creature's genes.

Essential genes

"Will we eventually get to a molecular definition of life? I hope that will
happen, yes," he told the BBC.

M. genitalium has a close relative, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, that has the
same 480 genes as M. genitalium, plus 200 extra ones. "So we decided
these genes were not essential to life," Venter said.

Craig Venter: We still have much to learn about the biological cell

One by one, the team disrupted the genes in M. genitalium to see which
ones the organism could not live without. They did this using transposons,
which are stretches of DNA that insert themselves into genes. The number
found to be essential was not exact, but close enough, the Tigr team said.

Most interesting is the large number of genes that are necessary, but about
which the researchers have no idea what they do.

"Our results imply that of the 111 genes of unknown function that have not
been disrupted in our experiments, the majority are essential," the
researchers wrote.

"The presence of so many genes of unknown function among the essential
genes of the simplest known cell suggests that all the basic molecular
mechanisms underlying cellular life may not yet have been described."

Much to learn

The study also established that some genes were only essential in certain
circumstances, when, for example, particular nutrients were denied to the
microbe. Dr Venter told the BBC: "We realised that life is context
sensitive. It does not exist on its own. It has to interact with its
environment."

The researchers have suggested the next step would be to create an
artificial bacterium, based on the essential genes. The first step in such an
experiment would be to build an artificial chromosome to carry the genes.

"We are not going to carry out this experiment until there has been a
broader debate on the issue," Dr Venter said. "Technically we would need
to synthesise a genome and see if it led to a living organism.

"It would clearly be creating a new species of life that does not exist. I
think if we could get down to the point of truly understanding and having
one of the formulas for life - and you have to understand that there are
thousands if not millions of different formulas - it would be a profound
breakthrough."

Dr Venter said the technology could lead to custom microbes that have
myriad practical and commercial implications such as to clean up toxic
messes or to create renewable energy by splitting water into hydrogen and
oxygen.

M. genitalium image by Frantz, Albay and Bott from University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill

[...]

(c) BBC

[Whitehouse D., "Scientists call for life creation debate," BBC, 10
December, 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/556984.stm]
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Electronic Telegraph

[16 December, 1999]

Simple recipe for the creation of life itself

Scientists wrestle with the idea of building a new species from scratch.
Roger Highfield reports

WHEN Dr Craig Venter says he wants to make a synthetic organism,
scientists sit up and listen. His pioneering efforts have already turned him
into the Bill Gates of genetics.

Venter has always had an iconoclastic bent. He barely graduated from a
San Francisco high school and in the 1960s was surfing in Newport Beach,
California until he was drafted. Early hopes of becoming a member of the
navy's Olympic swimming team were dashed by the war in Vietnam.

Craig Venter: origin of a new species?

But he excelled in an intelligence test, which enabled him to pursue
medicine. Venter turned 21 in Vietnam where he patched up casualties for
five days and nights without a break in Da Nang during the Tet offensive.
"I saw that there is too little time in life to waste on B.S. approaches...I
want to be moving forward with the discovery of new things."

Today he has the money, the technology and the drive to deliver: in 1995
he surprised geneticists by publishing the first complete DNA sequence of
a free-living organism, the bacterium Hemophilus influenzae, which can
cause meningitis and deafness.

The next year he tackled Archea Methanococcus jannaschii, an ancient
Pacific Ocean organism that is so hardy that it could, for example, have
splashed down from Mars and helped to create the nutrient-rich seas in
which life evolved.

Now he has whittled down the smallest known genetic code - of a simple
bacterium - to a bare minimum set of essential genes. A proposal to put
this recipe into a synthetic organism is "pending ethical review", he reports
in the current issue of the journal Science.

Working at The Institute for Genomic Research, Rockville, Maryland, he
and his colleagues studied the simple Mycoplasma genitalium, which
grazes in human genital tracts. The ubiquitous parasite is described by 517
genes (each coding for a protein), whereas human beings are described by
around 100,000.

During the studies, Dr Venter's team used a "jumping gene" to
systematically knock out some of the genes of the bacterium to see if it can
still survive. As he put it, "how many genes can call in sick before you no
longer have a living cell?" Then he used the same approach on the
pneumonia organism Mycoplasma pneumoniae that has an additional 202
genes.

This work suggests that the minimum number of genes necessary for life is
between 265 and 350, a figure also suggested by theoretical studies. The
discovery of the minimal genome has implications for designing a genetic
code of an organism - genome engineering - and for "building new species
of life from scratch".

Just as Mary Shelley's Dr Frankenstein used bits and pieces to make a
monster, one approach would be to salvage components from bacteria to
construct an artificial bug, for example, an artificial chromosome could be
plugged into a Mycoplasma cell that had been emptied of its DNA.
Another approach would be to take an extract from the bacterium and see
if the chromosome can persuade this soup of metabolic machinery to form
a cell.

Dr Mildred Cho and colleagues from Stanford University and the
Pennsylvania Centre for Bioethics comment that the achievement marks
"an important step forward in genetic engineering as it would permit the
creation of organisms (new and existing)", but add that a "large
technological gap" remains before scientists can create life in the lab.

However, they stress that public debate must keep pace with the science.
There are practical benefits, such as synthetic organisms that could deliver
drugs into the cells of a sick body, organisms that could clean a dirty
environment, even organisms with the ability to generate fuel from waste.
But there are dangers that artificial organism technology could harm or
pollute.

The temptation to demonise this fundamental research may be irresistible,
they comment, but they add that too often concerns about "playing God"
have become a way of "forestalling rather than fostering discussion about
morally responsible manipulation of life." They claim there is nothing in
this research agenda that is automatically forbidden by religious
considerations, but it does raise questions as to how we frame our
definition of life, which is still controversial.

The eminent physicist Erwin Schrödinger suggested that a fundamental
property of life was its tendency to produce increased order and seemingly
unlikely arrangements of things, such as the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen,
oxygen and phosphorous atoms arranged in the double helices of DNA.

If a genetic definition of life took hold, it could have implications for the
abortion debate, said Dr Cho. Extrapolating it to a logical extreme, any
cell or collection of cells that contain a human genetic complement - such
as dandruff - should have rights.

[...]

Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1998. [...]

[Highfield R., "Simple recipe for the creation of life itself," Daily
Telegraph, 16 December, 1999]
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The Washington Post

Scientists Planning to Make New Form of Life

By Justin Gillis Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 21,
2002; Page A01

Scientists in Rockville are to announce this morning that they plan to
create a new form of life in a laboratory dish, a project that raises ethical
and safety issues but also promises to illuminate the fundamental
mechanics of living organisms.

J. Craig Venter, the gene scientist with a history of pulling off unlikely
successes, and Hamilton O. Smith, a Nobel laureate, are behind the plan.
Their intent is to create a single-celled, partially man-made organism with
the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life. If the experiment
works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to
create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist.

To ensure safety, Smith and Venter said the cell will be deliberately
hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people; it also will be strictly
confined, and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the
environment.

More worrisome than the risk of escape, they acknowledged, is that the
project could lay the scientific groundwork for a new generation of
biological weapons, a risk that may force them to be selective about
publishing technical details. But they said the project could also help
advance the nation's ability to detect and counter existing biological
weapons.

The project, funded with a $3 million, three-year grant from the Energy
Department, will start as a pure scientific endeavor, but it could eventually
have practical applications. If Venter and his collaborators manage to
create a minimalist organism of the sort they envision, they will attempt to
add new functions to it one at a time -- conferring on it the ability, for
instance, to break down the carbon dioxide from power plant emissions or
to produce hydrogen for fuel.

The more immediate plan is to try to puzzle out, and eventually model in a
computer, every conceivable aspect of the biology of one organism, a feat
science has never come close to accomplishing. Because all living cells are
based on the same chemistry and bear striking resemblances to one
another, that could shed light on all of biology. "We are wondering if we
can come up with a molecular definition of life," Venter said. "The goal is
to fundamentally understand the components of the most basic living cell."

The project is not entirely new. Venter launched an earlier version of it in
the late 1990s while running a Rockville institute he founded called the
Institute for Genomic Research. With his collaborators, he got as far as
publishing a working list of the genes apparently required to sustain life in
a single-celled organism called Mycoplasma genitalium, the self-
replicating organism with the smallest known complement of genetic
material. That work indicated that under at least some laboratory
conditions, the organism could get by with only 300 or so of its 517 genes.
People, by contrast, have an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 genes.

The project fell by the wayside when Venter and Smith launched Celera
Genomics Corp., the Rockville company that raced publicly funded
researchers to a tie two years ago in compiling draft maps of the entire
human genetic complement, the genome.

Venter resigned from Celera early this year in a dispute over its future
direction. He is financing a series of new initiatives, including the Institute
for Biological Energy Alternatives, the entity that will house a revived
project to build the artificial organism. The $3 million Energy Department
grant, awarded recently, will pay for a staff of about 25 to pursue the
project over three years, though Venter and Smith acknowledged it could
take longer. Smith, widely considered one of the world's most skilled
scientists at manipulating DNA, will direct the laboratory work.

The project will begin with M. genitalium, a minuscule organism that lives
in the genital tracts of people and may cause or contribute to some cases of
urethritis, an inflammation of the urethra. The scientists will remove all
genetic material from the organism, then synthesize an artificial string of
genetic material, resembling a naturally occurring chromosome, that they
hope will contain the minimum number of M. genitalium genes needed to
sustain life. The artificial chromosome will be inserted into the
hollowedout cell, which will then be tested for its ability to survive and
reproduce.

Ari Patrinos, a senior Energy Department administrator who will help
oversee the project, said the organism was an attractive starting point to
create a "minimal genome" because it is so minimal already. "We know
even the simplest of cells is incredibly complicated," Patrinos said -- too
complicated, at least so far, to understand completely. "This is a case
where we're trying to cheat a little bit, to take the smallest and simplest
and make it smaller and simpler."

The project raises philosophical, ethical and practical questions. For
instance, if a man-made organism proved able to survive and reproduce
only under a narrow range of laboratory conditions, could it really be
considered life? More broadly, do scientists have any moral right to create
new organisms?

A panel of ethicists and religious leaders, convened several years ago at
Venter's request, has already wrestled with the latter issue. The group,
which included a rabbi and a priest, concluded that if the ultimate goal was
to benefit mankind and if all appropriate safeguards were followed, the
project could be regarded as ethical.

"I'm less worried about the minimal genome project taking off and
creating some kind of monster bug than I would be, partly because I have a
sense that the scientists are aware of the possible risks of what they're
doing," said Mildred Cho, a bioethicist at Stanford University who was
chairwoman of the ethics panel.

Scientists don't usually announce their experiments in advance, but Venter
said he felt this one needed to be brought to the attention of policymakers
in Washington, since it could create a new set of tools that terrorists or
hostile states might exploit to make biological weapons. "We'll have a
debate on what should be published and what shouldn't," Venter said. "We
may not disclose all the details that would teach somebody else how to do
this."

Venter and Smith acknowledged the theoretical risk of creating a new
disease-causing germ, but said they would take steps to ensure against that.
One of the first genes they'll delete is the one that gives M. genitalium the
ability to adhere to human cells. Many of the 200 genes to be deleted will
be ones that confer the ability to survive in a hostile environment, so that
the end result will be a delicate creature, at home only in the warm nutrient
bath of a laboratory dish.

Even if the organism were to escape stringent confinement and enter the
environment, Smith said, "it's a dead duck."

(c) 2002 The Washington Post Company

[Gillis J., "Scientists Planning to Make New Form of Life," The
Washington Post , November 21, 2002; Page A01.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17496-2002Nov20]
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The Guardian

[...]

It's life, but not as God planned it

Attempts to create synthetic life in a laboratory are no longer science
fiction. David Adam and Ian Sample report

Thursday April 1, 2004 [...]

Scientists are often accused of trying to play God. Cloning experts, genetic
engineers and atomic physicists have all fiddled with aspects of the world
that many believe should remain the preserve of some higher power. But
for one group of scientists in particular, playing is a serious business. They
are seeking to create life itself, and in doing so could push God aside.

They are making astonishing progress. According to the Bible it took six
days to create heaven, Earth and everything in them; the scientists already
need only a fortnight to produce a totally synthetic organism. They are also
figuring out how to expand life's genetic code, which has acted as a barrier
to new forms of creation since time immemorial. "I don't think there's
anything wrong with playing God," says Clyde Hutchison, one of the new
breed of scientists learning to master creation. "As long as it's just
playing."

Before tackling the creation of new life, the scientists have been forced to
ask a more fundamental question: what, precisely, is it? What are the bare
essentials life requires, the building blocks needed to make the most basic
living organism? The answer has an almost profound significance, for it is
these components that form the common denominator that links every
living thing on Earth, from aardvarks to amoebae, zooplankton to zebras.

The common denominator for life is a package of genes that together do
the bare minimum necessary to produce a living organism; enough to
produce life, but no more. All other genes are add-ons, tweaks that nudge
an organism into one species or other, that help grow fins or feet, trunks or
tails.

At his lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hutchison is
trying to find the essentials for life by playing what seems a macabre
game. He begins by taking a clutch of the most basic forms of life known
to man, a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. The bacterium has
only 500 or so genes, compared with an estimated 42,000 genes found in
humans.

Because M. genitalium has fewer genes than any other living organism,
Hutchison says it is the closest nature has to the simplest possible life
form. Most of the genes inside the bacterium are vital for its survival,
helping the bacterium to grow its body, divide and convert nutrients
around it into energy. But to find out the bare minimum required for life,
Hutchison is systematically whittling down the bacterium by knocking out
genes to find the point at which life becomes impossible. So far, he
believes he's found up to 215 genes that are strictly superfluous for the
microbe's survival, meaning that a cassette of fewer than 300 genes is
required for life.

Stripping life down to its essentials has more than curiosity appeal. While
scientists like to think they know all the processes essential for life, a
simple organism would allow them to work out precisely how life works.
"The exciting possibility is that there may be some essential biological
functions that are vital for life that we just don't know about," says
Hutchison.

In the grand tradition of taking things apart and putting them back together
again, scientists are also keen to rebuild life from its basic components. By
starting with a stripped down, basic life form, a designer organism could
be made by simply adding genes, says Hutchison. It would allow
organisms to be designed for specific tasks, like breaking down pollutants.
"We believe it will get to the stage where we can sit down at a computer
and design the organism we want just by ordering in the parts. It won't be
fundamentally different to genetic modification, but it's a lot more
flexible," he says. While the motivations at this stage are essentially
scientific curiosity, stronger urges are also at work. "Part of it is definitely
a desire to play God," he says.

More ambitious than making new organisms from stripped-down life
forms is the prospect of creating new life from scratch. In 2002, a team of
scientists led by Eckard Wimmer at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook caused a stir when they created the polio virus by chemically
stitching together strands of DNA ordered from the internet.

Although viruses are not technically alive - since they need to hijack other
living cells to replicate - the techniques used pave the way to making
living cells. Last year, Hutchison, in collaboration with Craig Venter's
group at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, disclosed that
they had produced a virus of their own, a harmless strain called phi-x.
Having recreated the virus's DNA using a similar technique to Wimmer,
Hutchison injected it into E coli. The virus replicated and broke out of the
cells and was able to infect new bacteria.

Venter sees designer organisms as the saviour of the planet. His aim is to
create new microbes that can strip carbon dioxide from our polluted
atmosphere or churn out hydrogen so it can be used as a new power
source.

Before embarking on the work, Venter's institute convened a bioethics
committee to see if their plans were likely to raise objections from certain
quarters of society. The committee, led by Mildred Cho at the centre for
biomedical ethics at Stanford University, had no objections to the work,
but pointed out that scientists must take responsibility for any impact their
new organisms had if they got out of the lab. "Even if you're not intending
to release them, you can't have the view that it's not your problem if they
do get out," she says. Hutchison argues that designer organisms will be so
specialised that they can be designed to die as soon as they leave
laboratory conditions.

Strictly speaking, these scientists are not playing God, but copying God.
At present they can only build synthetic versions of organisms that already
exist, using their decoded genomes as instructions. Even designer
organisms built from scratch will be stitched together from synthetic
versions of genes that already exist. Is this truly the creation of artificial
life? If not, will scientists ever be able to design and synthesise new genes,
creating life the like of which has never been seen before?

Not according to Wimmer. "Sitting down at a desk and constructing an
entirely new virus from scratch that doesn't exist on Earth is totally
impossible," he says. "By shuffling things around that exist already you
could get something with different properties, such as a bacterium that eats
up oil much faster, but this is very different from saying I create a new
form of life."

Life is just too complex to invent from scratch. Wimmer and Venter may
have been able to produce the viral equivalents of fake Mona Lisas by
copying every brushstroke, but they have as much chance of painting a
new masterpiece as a three-year-old using potato prints. Even a virus
something so primitive that it does not earn the right to be called alive
relies on a bewildering series of hidden chemical reactions and biological
interactions that are not revealed in the sparse language of its genes.
Scientists can only work with what already exists. Genes are life's playing
cards, and however many ways they devise to shuffle them, they must
always use the same deck.

But what if new cards could be introduced to the game? The set of genes
may be fixed, but what about the proteins they produce - which bend, fold
and combine to give every cell, every organ and every living thing their
distinctive features?

Since life began, all creatures have been based on the same set of
biological building blocks: 20 amino acids from which all proteins are
made. No longer. If you are looking for scientists who are truly learning to
play God then start your search at the Scripps research institute in
California. And they are not biologists, but chemists.

Biologists may be unable to devise new genes, but chemists have no
problem making new amino acids. Nature has limited itself to using just
20 (and nobody knows why) but chemistry labs the world over have
synthesised hundreds. Swirl these unnatural amino acids around in a test
tube and you can get interesting results. Design a living organism capable
of using them and you create bona-fide new forms of life. And that is
exactly what the Scripps scientists are doing.

"There are potential ethical issues with this if you're creating new forms of
life, which I think in one sense that is," says Jason Chin, who worked at
the Scripps centre and is now at the MRC's laboratory for molecular
biology in Cambridge.

In January last year, the team said they had created an E coli bacterium
capable of incorporating a 21st amino acid into its proteins, and in August
they repeated the trick in yeast. They are now investigating how it might
work in worms and cultured human kidney cells. Living mice will
probably follow, and in principle there is nothing to stop the same
technique being used to redesign a person.

This clever chemistry goes way beyond shifting genes around between
organisms. The unnatural amino acids have never been available to living
things in millions of years of evolution, so who knows the benefits or
dangers they could bring? "The big question is whether life with 21 amino
acids can do anything that life with 20 amino acids can't," says Chin.
Perhaps they could allow life to flourish where previously impossible by
withstanding poisons or surviving extreme temperatures - or make
diseases immune to existing cures.

The Scripps team is currently trying to find out what their new bug dubbed
an Un Coli - is capable of. Uniquely, it has been given the cellular
machinery it needs to synthesise the unnatural amino acid itself (the
research with yeast and worms requires the amino acid to be made in a lab
and then supplied). Could it be dangerous? The team has taken no chances
and has crippled its ability to make a different, essential amino acid it
needs to live. "Outside the laboratory it would starve and that's how they
controlled letting the thing live," Chin says. Being able to create new
proteins raises the possibility of introducing new traits on demand. Some
of the unnatural amino acids have hooks to which other molecules like
dyes can be hung. Get an organism to incorporate these and researchers
can track the proteins produced to see what they do inside cells. Other
chemicals could be added to make the bugs manufacture designer proteins
used as medicines.

Chemists have also made more bizarre amino acids that glow in the dark,
or change shape when light shines on them. Design a mouse that
incorporates these in the right place in the right proteins, and you could
produce an animal with fluorescent fur that switches from straight to curly
in the dark.

"You could certainly do that if someone gave you the money," Chin says.
"It's a fuzzy line whether you call it a new form of life but in principle you
have the ability to control a lot of things."

But because scientists have the ability, should they use it? In theory the
Scripps team's work could one day lead to freakish creatures, but that
seems unlikely, and right now they are working to understand fundamental
processes and develop better medicines. Ashton Cropp, a researcher with
the Scripps institute, says ethics is not yet an issue because they are
dealing with microbes and cultured cells, but he accepts that they will have
to be more careful when the work moves to mice.

Even then, there may be fewer objections to the idea of scientists creating
new life than some people think.

When it assessed Venter's plans, Mildred Cho's ethics team also looked at
whether religious groups were likely to take issue with scientists openly
admitting to "playing God". Although not every religion was represented
on the committee, those that were, including Judaism and Christianity, had
no problem.

"The idea that playing God is wrong is not supported by religious texts. It's
a popular notion of religion, but not one that is backed up," Cho says. "All
our religious advisers used the same metaphor: God gives us the keys to
the car, saying, you have the keys, just don't crash the car."

Talk about this story here

Further reading

http://schultz.scripps.edu/ research.htm More on Peter Schultz's efforts to
expand the genetic code

www.bioenergyalts.org Craig Venter's Institute for Biological Energy
Alternatives

http://gels.ethics.ubc.ca Analysing the ethics of genomics

www.thehastingscenter.org/pdf/publications/in_brief_nov_dec_2003.pdf
Further analysis of the ethics of using genetics to create new life

[...]

(c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 [...]

[...]

(Adam D. & Sample I., "It's life, but not as God planned it," The Guardian,
April 1, 2004.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/sciences/story/0,12243,1183019,00.html)
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"Haemophilus influenza contains about 1,700 genes; Mycoplasma
genitalium contains only 470 genes, the smallest number yet discovered
for any species. Arcady Mushegian and Eugene Koonin of the National
Center for Biotechnology Information reasoned that any genes such
diverse species hold in common are likely essential for basic cell function.
That number adds up to 240. To cover certain enzyme functions critical
for cell survival. they add 22 genes, for a total of 262, then they trim out 6
genes that appear redundant or specific to each bacteria's adaptation for
feeding on its specific host. Their final figure, then, for the minimum
genome to support cell function and reproduction is 256. [Mushegian A.R.
& Koonin E.V., "A Minimal Gene Set for Cellular Life Derived by
Comparison of Complete Bacterial Genomes," Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences USA, volume 93, 1996, pp.10268-10273] Referring
to their calculation as preliminary, Mushegian and Koonin realize they
may have overlooked some critical function(s) not covered by the 256
genes. Clearly, the bacteria do have to find and attach to suitable hosts,
and some level of genetic redundancy appears essential for species'
survival. When complete genome analysis for more species, including
humans, becomes available in a few months, a more accurate estimate of
life's minimal chemical complexity will also be available. But in the
meantime, Mushegian and Koonin's work provides a ballpark figure for
determining the magnitude of the "spontaneous generation" problem.
Anyone proposing a naturalistic interpretation for life's origin must be able
to explain how 256+ genes, plus all the other chemical components and
structures for survival and reproduction put themselves together via
mindless, purposeless, non-organic processes." (Ross H.N.*, "Simplest
Bacterium Not So Simple," Facts & Faith, Reasons To Believe: Pasadena
CA, Vol. 10, No. 4, Fourth Quarter 1996, p.5.
http://www.reasons.org/resources/faf/96q4faf/simple.shtml)
Stephen E. Jones, BSc (Biol). http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones
Moderator: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign &
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProblemsOfEvolution/ Book: "Problems of
Evolution" http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/PoE/PoE00ToC.html &
http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/pe00cont.html
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