http://www.nature.com/nature/j ournal/v410/n6829/full/410715a 0.html23 July 2010
Is Craig Venter’s Synthetic Cell Really Life?
DonaldM
Bioethicist Gregory Kaebnick, Ph.D., has an interesting take on the recently announced synthetic cell created by a team of researchers led by J. Craig Venter at the J. Craig Venter Instititute (JVCI). In a recent article in The Scientist entitled Is the “Synthetic Cell” about Life?, Kaebnick writes:
…the technical accomplishment is not quite what the JCVI press release claimed. It’s hard to see this as a synthetic species, or a synthetic organism, or a synthetic cell; it’s a synthetic genome of Mycoplasma mycoides, which is familiar enough. David Baltimore was closer to the truth when he told the New York Times that the researchers had not created life so much as mimicked it. It might be still more accurate to say that the researchers mimicked one part and borrowed the rest.
The explanation from the Venter camp is that the genome took over the cell, and since the genome is synthetic, therefore the cell is synthetic. But this assumes a strictly top-down control structure that some biologists now question. Why not say instead that the genome and the cell managed to work out their differences and collaborate, or even that the cell adopted the genome (and its identity)? Do we know enough to say which metaphor is most accurate?
Kaebnick raises an interesting point: is this synthetic cell life? If we grant that it is, what are the implications for either evolution or ID, if any? My initial thought is that what Venter et.al created is not life. In that respect, I think David Baltimore got it right in the above quote.
Still, its worth considering, is this life? If so, why? And, what are the implications for ID and/or evolution. Its hard to see how this helps evolution in that design is everywhere in the experiment. Indeed, if this cell does qualify as life, then it is clearly purposely, intelligently designed life.
I’d be interested in what the readers and posters here on UD think about all this.
1
tragic mishap
07/23/2010
10:50 am
Not sure why there would be any hesitation to call it life if it’s working.
I would actually be more interested in attempts to do this that fail. Did Venter publish anything about previous failures? It would be more interesting to me if a genome was put into a cell and it died, or got screwed up somehow. That sort of thing would be evidence against what you call the “top-down control structure”. It would show that a genome cannot just take over a cell.
But Venter is not interested in questions like that. He’s interested in making a name for himself.
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bFast
07/23/2010
11:45 am
Dr. Venter is a plagerist. Biologists don’t even know what many of the genes in the most primitive of archaea are, so how could Dr. Venter have created new genes that do the same thing. He put in a bit of his own DNA. Specifically markers that spell out a few people’s names. I doubt if he put in ANY functional DNA.
He took major sections of nature-made DNA and copied it to create his own DNA sequence. Is his cell “alive”? Sure. Did he make it? That’s as stretch!
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fmarotta
07/23/2010
12:30 pm
Whether it is life or not, it is intelligently designed.
Apart from the testimony/evidence presented by the designer, is the design detectable? That is the question that interests me most. Not whether it is life or not (which is certainly a relavent question as well), but whether the design aspects are detectable.
I would think that whether one believes in Intelligent Design or Evolution, that we can all acknowledge that mankind is now play a participatory role in modifying pre-existing organisms. I think it would be of interest to all parties to be able to detect such participatory design. But is anyone actively interested in this idea?
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above
07/23/2010
2:12 pm
Such distortions of truth are simply the byproduct of unconstrained human pride.
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PaV
07/23/2010
2:25 pm
The almost perfect anaology that is operative here is that of computer programming.
Since it took Venter “years” to accomplish his feat, this must have certainly included a lot of trial and error work. We already know that very large segments of “highly conserved ‘junk-DNA’” can be entirely eliminated from a mouse embryo and normal development, and normal mice, ensue. So limited manual manipulation of a genome will surely, at some point, admit of a ‘successful’ manipulation. It’s along these lines that we should understand what’s been done.
It seems to me that all Venter has accomplished here is to have ‘designed’ a ‘program’ that the ‘computer’ (cell) can recognize and implement (compiler function). His work, then, clearly demonstrates the cell to be an information-processing system. That such a system allows itself of a contrived (but, of course, contrived in unessential ways) input, only reaffirms the already obvious understanding of organic life as that of a highly complicated information processing system that operates in ways similar to present day computers. Hence, given that computers are known to be ‘designed’, Venter’s work serves to link the operational system of a cell to that of a known ‘designed system’.
And, of course, this also undermines the ridiculous argument so frequently made by Darwinists: viz., to be able to manipulate an operational cell in a meaningful, but artificial way, means that we have some understanding of ‘how’ a cell operates; thus, how can it be argued that “we don’t know the Designer, so how can we know anything about his designs?”
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anonym
07/23/2010
3:44 pm
As I http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-355340 mentioned previously, “Reflections on Trusting Trust” is relevant here.
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roundsquare
07/23/2010
5:10 pm
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roundsquare
07/23/2010
5:22 pm
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markf
07/24/2010
3:22 am
Just testing whether I can make comments.
Pls excuse the junk mail.
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Dov Henis
07/24/2010
3:42 am
More On Venter’s New “Life Form”,
Plain Ignorance
“Is the “Synthetic Cell” about Life?”
A bioethicist explores the soul of Venter’s new life form and of his experiment
http://www.the-scientist.com/a.....lay/57523/
- “Heralded as the moment that science finally took the magic out of life.”
* What magic is there in life? All life forms are mass formats comprising constrained energy. They ingest energy in order to survive as long as possible, to postpone their own conversion to energy that fuels the ongoing cosmic expansion. Where/what is the magic? Replication?
- Venter has said that his achievement has changed the definition of life.
* IMO my suggestion of the nature of life mass format is THE presently most updated scientific conception. I wonder what Venter’s definitions of life are for the prior and after the “Synthetic Cell”.
A cell is a construction comprising resident life primal RNA genes and a variety of organs evolved by them. Archaic RNA genes were independent bare floating organisms, energized by direct solar radiation. Cells, cellular membranes, including the outer membrane, are organs evolved by the resident RNA genes. Genomes, DNA or RNA, are likewise functional organs evolved by the resident RNA genes.
Life is, by our sensory conception, a virtual reality affair. Religion and “spiritualty” are virtual reality tools for going through life. The purpose of our life is ours to formulate and set. It derives solely from our cognition, which is a biologic entity.
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
03.2010 Updated Life Manifest
http://www.the-scientist.com/c......page#5065
Cosmic Evolution Simplified
http://www.the-scientist.com/c......page#4427
Gravity Is The Monotheism Of The Cosmos
http://www.the-scientist.com/c......page#4887
EOTOE, Embarrassingly obvious TOE, expanding the horizon beyond Darwin And Einstein
http://www.molecularfossils.co.....ersal.html
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DonaldM
07/24/2010
10:05 pm
roundsquare – what does some TV miracle healer have to do with this discussion thread? Please keep to the topic.
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THEMAYAN
07/25/2010
12:46 pm
I have to disagree with Pav on your interpretation of truncated mouse genome study as resulting in “normal mice”. I’m not saying that you may not be right, but I am saying that all the data is not in yet. If you read what was actually said in fine print, all they really knew was that the mice were alive.
The authors admitted that they could not know if there were negative side effects since they were not tested for them. They were also well fed and cared for and did not have to contend with real world stresses such as being exposed to a non sterile and non controlled germ free environment or other challenges that non cared fore animals living in the wild would have to deal with.
My point is that there were a few other things that should also be considered. Titles are designed to attract attention. The real creamy filling is in the detail.