Author: Robert Lee Hotz The Wall Street Journal May 21, 2010

Main Idea A unprecedented advance in science history: Scientists successfully crafted a “synthetic cell” completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions(inserted genome).

Dr. John Craig Venter One of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world 2007 and He founded Synthetic Genome Inc. in 2005 funding $30 million dollars for experiment and intellectual rights(patent). Picture from:

Synthetic Biology synthetic biology is a interdisciplinary subject (computer science, chemistry, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology), whose goal is to breed industrial life forms which may be able to secrete fuel, vaccine, or other commercial products.

Supporting Details Previously, researchers have been altering DNA piecemeal to display multiple phenotypes (ex: production of insulin by yeast cell). For the first time, scientists generated an entire artificial cell (a bacterium) with predetermined properties. Picture from:

Bioengineer Daniel Gibson and J. C. Venter replaced the genome inside bacteria Mycoplasma capricolum with a modified genome of another bacteria Mycoplasma mycoides. They called the synthetic cell Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn bacterial-cell/7256/ Mycoplasma capricolum Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 Supporting Details

They documented the sequence of 1 million base pairs of the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides into file, edited the file and sent to a DNA sequencing company to produce real DNA fragments according to the file. Then they meld the pieces by yeasts and bacteria, assembled into the whole sequence and inserted it into Mycoplasma capricolum Supporting Details

Posed Issues An advance on synthetic life raised new questions on the nature of life: is the cell a real “synthetic life”? Or merely a genetic engineering product? The research also raised ethical issues on artificial life: Is it ethically permissible to manipulate life? If yes, to what extent?

Comments "It has the potential to transform genetic engineering. The research is going to explode.“(David Magnus, Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics)

Comments "I don't think it represents the creation of an artificial life form, I view this as an organism with a synthetic genome, not as a synthetic organism. It is tough to draw where the line is.“ (James Collins, biomedical engineer, Boston University)

Comments Friends of the Earth quickly issued a statement to “fully regulate” all synthetic biology experiments and products. The ETC group even claimed global moratorium on synthetic biology.

"It is very much within divine mandate that we do these things." (theologian Nancey Murphy) "You have to have a way of tracking it.” (Stanford ethicist Mildred Cho) essors.com/ShowRating s.jsp?tid= Comments

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References ml ml takes/scientists-unveil-first-self-replicating-synthetic- bacterial-cell/7256/ takes/scientists-unveil-first-self-replicating-synthetic- bacterial-cell/7256/ html html