Resident Evil will happen :fyi:

[GemaRastem 10+ year member]

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms
By Rick Weiss

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, December 17, 2007; Page A01

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.

Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding. And while the first synthetic chromosome is a plagiarized version of a natural one, others that code for life forms that have never existed before are already under construction.

The cobbling together of life from synthetic DNA, scientists and philosophers agree, will be a watershed event, blurring the line between biological and artificial -- and forcing a rethinking of what it means for a thing to be alive.

"This raises a range of big questions about what nature is and what it could be," said Paul Rabinow, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies science's effects on society. "Evolutionary processes are no longer seen as sacred or inviolable. People in labs are figuring them out so they can improve upon them for different purposes."

That unprecedented degree of control over creation raises more than philosophical questions, however. What kinds of organisms will scientists, terrorists and other creative individuals make? How will these self-replicating entities be contained? And who might end up owning the patent rights to the basic tools for synthesizing life?

Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core "operating system" for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology. That could stifle competition, they say, and place enormous power in a few people's hands.

"We're heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?" asked Drew Endy, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the core of synthetic biology's new ascendance are high-speed DNA synthesizers that can produce very long strands of genetic material from basic chemical building blocks: sugars, nitrogen-based compounds and phosphates.

Today a scientist can write a long genetic program on a computer just as a maestro might compose a musical score, then use a synthesizer to convert that digital code into actual DNA. Experiments with "natural" DNA indicate that when a faux chromosome gets plopped into a cell, it will be able to direct the destruction of the cell's old DNA and become its new "brain" -- telling the cell to start making a valuable chemical, for example, or a medicine or a toxin, or a bio-based gasoline substitute.

Unlike conventional biotechnology, in which scientists induce modest genetic changes in cells to make them serve industrial purposes, synthetic biology involves the large-scale rewriting of genetic codes to create metabolic machines with singular purposes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/16/AR2007121601900.html

Yep, killer inside out dogs are just around the corner.

Click to read more...

 

[savagebee 10+ year member]

Yep, killer inside out dogs are just around the corner.

*looks over shoulder to verify access to ammunition and weapons*

sweet

 

[DjiNN 10+ year member]

Wish i had this ..

 

[Fast1one 10+ year member]

Do they even know WHAT they are making? I just skimmed through it so I may have missed that part, imagine creating some super fast, man eating predator by accident //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

 

[dragnix 5,000+ posts]

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/woot.gif.aaa6090e619a97b6090d16dd863c5a69.gif now i can go drinking all i want since they can make me organs //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/woot.gif.aaa6090e619a97b6090d16dd863c5a69.gif

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

:yahh:

 

[Liquid Bass 10+ year member]

this shit is just wrong, and we aren't meant to do this stuff along with cloning

 

[J31Rob 5,000+ posts]

Too much reading.

But no it won't.

 

[brtnboarder3241 5,000+ posts]

this shit is just wrong, and we aren't meant to do this stuff along with cloning

x2 i think this is gonna be a bad thing.. really bad.

 

[MemphisCherokee 10+ year member]

*looks over shoulder to verify access to ammunition and weapons*
sweet

good thing i live a 5 minutes drive away from the rock island arsenal

zombies aint got shit on me

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

They've been theorizing about DNA based data storage systems for years....this might be a step in the right direction

 

[IamDeMan 5,000+ posts]

this shit is just wrong, and we aren't meant to do this stuff along with cloning

Blah blah blah, gtfo.

 

[IamDeMan 5,000+ posts]

x2 i think this is gonna be a bad thing.. really bad.

I believe the human race has the ability to overcome anything it creates as well.

More importantly I believe in me to overcome all.

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

Blah blah blah, gtfo.

true dat. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/laugh.gif.48439b2acf2cfca21620f01e7f77d1e4.gif

seriously though, there is enough possible data storage in a single strand of hair to equal a few terabytes per inch. We cant access or deal with that kind of data structure yet, but it sounds like we're headed in that direction.

 

[IamDeMan 5,000+ posts]

They've been theorizing about DNA based data storage systems for years....this might be a step in the right direction

Using analog to do our bidding will > than digital in all respects. You can't deny the infinite power and adaptability of analog.