…and this is a 
I've been following the reaction to the synthesis of a new life form by the Venter lab with some interest and amusement. There have been a couple of common directions taken, and they're generally all wrong. This is not to say that there couldn't be valid concerns, but that the loudest complaining voices right now are the most ignorant.
Hysteria and fear-mongering
Pearl-clutching and fretting over the consequences is fairly common, with a representative example from The Daily Mail (Stridently stupid 'journalistic' outlet).
But there are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon, or that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend.
The article refers to that awful movie a couple of times. It's a little baffling; were they getting kickbacks from the movie producers or something?
The complaint is misplaced. What they've accomplished is to synthesize a copy of an existing organism, with a few non-adaptive markers added. It's no threat at all. We do have the potential to now modify that genome more extensively; the interesting scientific work will be to pare away genes and reduce it to a truly minimalist version, just to see how much is really essential, and the useful industrial work will be to engineer organisms with additional genes that produce proteins useful for us, but not necessarily for the mycoplasma. That's going to compromise the competitiveness of the organism in the natural environment. I'm not worried.
Maybe someday when organisms can be built in some psychopath's garage, then we should worry. But for now, this is an experiment that takes a lot of teamwork and money and experience to pull off.
Playing GOD!
That same Daily Mail article goes on and on about that cliche.
Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: 'This is a Pandora's box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.'
Dr David King, of the Human Genetics Alert watchdog, said: 'What is really dangerous is these scientists' ambitions for total and unrestrained control over nature, which many people describe as 'playing God'.
'Scientists' understanding of biology falls far short of their technical capabilities. We have learned to our cost the risks that gap brings, for the environment, animal welfare and human health.'
Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: 'Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny.
'He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of God: Creating artificial life that could never have existed.'
The Catholic church, perhaps unsurprisingly since they've been burned in the past by the conflict between science and religion, is taking a very cautious stance on the issues. They clearly don't quite know what to make of it, but are prepared to offer their services if any ethical concerns arise.
Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction to the announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA. They warned scientists of the ethical responsibility of scientific progress and said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial.
Since it will be a long, long time before we can synthesize lubricious altar boys, however, I don't think there will be much call for Catholic advice on the ethics of synthetic biology. Just say no to irrelevant old perverts offering science advice. Besides, the church is also full of conservative fusspots who will spout tired stereotypes.
Another official with the Italian bishops' conference, Bishop Domenico Mogavero, expressed concern that scientists might be tempted to play God.
"Pretending to be God and parroting his power of creation is an enormous risk that can plunge men into a barbarity," Mogavero told newspaper La Stampa in an interview. Scientists "should never forget that there is only one creator: God."
"In the wrong hands, today's development can lead tomorrow to a devastating leap in the dark," said Mogavero, who heads the conference's legal affairs department.
There is no god. The only creators are chance and selection, and now Craig Venter.
The "playing God" noise is going to get even more tiresome, I'm sure. It's nonsense. If what they've done is playing God, then god is biochemistry and molecular biology and the natural processes of physics. We've all been playing god every time we cook, or paint, or knit, or write, or create. It's not a violation of the natural order, and it's simply doing what humans always do. Apparently, being human is the same thing as being god.
Total confusion
I'm extremely disappointed by the reaction of Andrew Brown, sometimes smart guy, all too often weird apologist for religion. I have no idea what he's trying to say, but he does try even harder than any atheist I know to tie this work to atheism. "Craig Venter's production of an entirely artificial bacterium marks another triumph of the only major scientific programme driven from the beginning by explicit atheism", he says, and "Atheists of the Dawkins type will take it as practical proof that there is no need to hypothesise God at all: we can make life without any miracles, and there's no need to imagine a creator". Say what? Venter's program was driven by scientific curiousity, not atheism; but if Brown wants to equate science with atheism, that's fine by me. We've also known all along that there is no need to hypothesize an intelligent creator, and this is only one more piece of evidence. It isn't proof. We don't deal with proof in science.
And then there's this baffling statement.
But at this moment of complete victory for materialism something odd has happened: the chemical and material world turns out to be entirely shaped by something called "information".
"Life is basically the result of an information process - a software process" says Venter, and "Starting with the information in a computer, we put it into a recipient cell, and convert it into a news species". But though this information clearly exists in some sense, it's impossible to say what kind of thing it is, because it isn't a thing at all. Whatever this may be, it isn't material, and it isn't bound by physical laws. Information turns out to be as elusive and as omnipresent as God once was.
I don't think so. We have tools to measure information, we can generate information, we can study information…we can't measure, generate, or study gods. There's nothing supernatural about information. Information is part of that chemical and material world, and we godless materialists aren't at all distressed by its existence.
Denial
When you look at what the creationists are saying, it's simple: they're scrambling to find excuses to reject the significance of the experiment. Expect to see variations of these same arguments repeated endless by every creationist you ever talk to!
There's the "it isn't really a synthetic organism" of Billy Dembski (Intelligent Design wackaloon and fundamentalist Christian), which is what you'd expect of someone who doesn't understand biology.
The rhetoric is interesting. What they've done is stuck a synthetic genome inside a nonsynthetic cell. Nonetheless, they've slipped into talking of a "synthetic bacterial cell." Indeed, one headline reads "The First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell." This is hype.
If something is going to be called "synthetic," shouldn't the whole of it be synthesized and not merely a minuscule portion of it? Also, does such a cell knowably signal design and, if so, why wouldn't cells untouched by Synthetic Genomics do the same, i.e., implicate design?
The synthesized genome was inserted into an existing bacterial cell, with it's extant suite of proteins and other molecules, this is entirely true. Venter and colleagues relied on the transcriptional enzymes and ribosomes and so forth already present in the cell to kick-start the activities of the DNA. However, this was only to bootstrap the genome into functionality; within 30 generations of this novel line, Venter estimates, every one of those proteins and every molecule of the cell will have been replaced with the products of the artificial genome.
So, if after a period of time, you've got a cell whose DNA was produced by a machine, and whose membranes, enzymes, structural proteins, and metabolic by-products were all produced by that machine-generated DNA or the protein products of that DNA, what makes it a non-synthetic cell?
The response from Answers in Genesis (Young Earth creationist clowns) is a variant of that objection. It's the "it isn't anything new" excuse.
Regardless of some hyped press reports, this research (brilliantly executed as it was) has nothing to do with evolution in the molecules-to-man sense. Dr. Georgia Purdom, a molecular geneticist on our Answers in Genesis (AiG) staff, notes that there has merely been an alteration within a kind (at the family, genus, or species level). Even the researchers have acknowledged that this first synthetic cell is more a re-creation of existing life -- changing one simple type of bacterium into another. While Venter claimed, "We have passed through a critical psychological barrier. It has changed my own thinking, both scientifically and philosophically, about life, and how it works," he was also quite clear that [his team] "didn't create life from scratch."
I can't believe they actually weaseled in that nonsense about "kinds" again, as if their fantasyland boundaries are actually relevant.
No, it's not something brand new, it's a conservative starting point from which to start generating novelties. This is an argument that will not be able to survive for long, since as work proceeds and genes are removed and new genes added to the artificial genome, the results will not be something that can be called simply another mycoplasm any more. Well, rational people will realize that this is a dead argument, but the kind of people who still insist that there are no transitional fossils will continue to parrot it, looking dumber and dumber year by year.
The argument that this says nothing about evolution is wrong. The bacterium synthesized is not a version of the very first life form to exist, so it's saying nothing about earlier forms (but that may change as we work towards reducing the synthetic bacterium to a bare-bones suite of genes), but it does say that bacteria are products of chemistry. If you honestly want to learn where the first cells come from, this work says you'd better look to biochemistry, not theology, or the pullitoutofmybuttology of AiG.
It defines a point in the middle of the evolutionary process, and says we arrived there by chemistry. Subsequent evolution, we already know, was by processes we understand (evolution!) but also denied by AiG.
Here's another argument from Reasons to Believe (Old Earth Creationist goofballs): the "it's too complicated to have evolved" chestnut that they've been chewing on for decades.
For example, Venter's team must identify the minimal gene set required for life's existence to re-engineer an artificial life-form from the top down. As they continue to hone in on life's essential genes and biochemical systems, what's most striking is the remarkable complexity of life even in its minimal form. And this basic complexity is the first clue that life requires a Creator.
This isn't life in its most minimal form. It's a copy of a modern prokaryotic bacterium. As I said above, this is representative of a midpoint in evolution, not its beginning. The complaint does not apply.
Furthermore, complexity does not imply design. Natural processes are quite good at generating complexity, even better than design, so pointing out that something is complex does not distinguish between the two hypotheses. If I had one magic wish and could wake up these idiots to one thing, it's the simple fact that complexity and design are not equivalent states.
Finally, the one argument we're probably going to hear the most from creationists in the coming years is the "the synthetic bacterium was built by design, therefore all life was designed". (Notice that Dembski makes the same illogical claim in his quote above.)
Given the effort that went into the synthesis of the total M. genitalium genome, it's hard to envision how unintelligent, undirected processes could have generated life from a prebiotic soup. Though not their intention, Venter's team unwittingly provided empirical evidence that life's components, and consequently, life itself must stem from the work of an Intelligent Designer.
Let's play a game. I just grabbed a deck of cards and dealt myself this hand:
J♥ K♠ 2♦ 6♥ 6♠
Now you grab a deck of cards and replicate my hand precisely. You had to go through the deck, card by card, search for those 5 specific cards, and then order them and lay them out in front of you, didn't you? I just dealt out the five top cards in a shuffled deck.
Which of us had to put the most effort into getting their five cards? Does this imply that in every game of poker, the dealer has to go through the deck and hand-pick which card is given to each person? The huge amount of effort that Venter's team put into this project does not imply that a focused team built the first mycoplasma genome by the same processes; it says that making a copy by our current technology requires that much effort. The "it was hard to make" excuse simply doesn't apply.
This does not imply that the original successful bacterium was generated by chance, as trivially as dealing a random array of nucleotides from a deck, however. Venter and his team cheated: they copied a known winner, a genome that had been honed by a few billion years of evolution into a successful organism. They sought out a winning hand like this one and copied it.
A♥ A♠ K♦ K♥ K♠
Again, you could give yourself that hand in a couple of different ways. You could go through the deck by design and pick out those cards. Or you could deal out hands repeatedly, throwing out any that don't match the target — that would work, too, given that you've got billions of years to play the game. Or you could do it as evolution does, just play poker with your buddies and know that there are lots of different ways to generate winning and losing hands, and the process will result in a winner emerging with every deal.
All of the denialist arguments are basically errors based on their misunderstanding of Venter's experiment and evolution in general. Be prepared, they will be recycled heavily.
Life Science
Comments
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
|
May 22, 2010 12:27 PM
"I don't understand. Can...can we have sex with it?"
Posted by: Zeno
|
May 22, 2010 12:37 PM
Ooh! Clever, clever creationists! Since they can't and won't ever give a real definition of "kind", they throw in the kitchen sink and several bathroom fixtures. Yeah, it's just a change within a kind -- whatever the hell that is.
Clever, clever.
Posted by: raven
|
May 22, 2010 12:41 PM
So how is making a synthetic lifeform like playing an invisible, undectable sky fairy who has been absent for millennia?
Sure. I and millions of other people frequently wake up from nightmares about Dolly the Sheep. That sheep is even more terrifying than Mickey Mouse or Morris the Cat.
Posted by: Zeno
|
May 22, 2010 12:42 PM
Goddam illiterate creationists! It's "home in." As in homing pigeon. (Sort of like Noah had [even though it was a dove], all right?) To "hone" is to give an keener edge to, like a knife, but these guys aren't very sharp.
Posted by: natural cynic
|
May 22, 2010 12:48 PM
Fixed it
Posted by: timrowledge, Ersatz Haderach
|
May 22, 2010 12:49 PM
Could someone please try to explain to the "it's too complicated to have evolved" chestnut tree that complexity is not a marker for design but an indication of lack of design? Actual design with good knowledge of your subject materials and processes results in simplicity.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
|
May 22, 2010 12:50 PM
"'Scientists' understanding of biology falls far short of their technical capabilities."
Oh really?
Sheesh, two comments in, and Zeno already bites my point about AIG shifting the boundaries of "kind" not only within a single sentence, but a single set of parentheses. Wow.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
|
May 22, 2010 12:53 PM
As I understand it, humans have been "playing God" ever since they started using fire. So why all the fuss?
Posted by: Zeno
|
May 22, 2010 12:53 PM
If you're in California, you have cause to fear sheep. According to GOP candidate Carly Fiorina (the despoiler of Hewlett-Packard), demon sheep are out to get us! Baaaaa!
Posted by: Kome
|
May 22, 2010 12:55 PM
I've never understood the objection to playing God. We play God all the time. Every antibiotic prescribed, every insulin injection, every surgery to correct vision, treat cancer, fix hearts and lungs and livers, every sterilized room so a mother can delivery a baby so the risk of harm to mother and baby is as low as possible, every fertility treatment so people who want children can have them, all of that is playing God. If God is all-loving, as religious people want to claim, shouldn't we all WANT to play God and save lives by utilizing the best scientific and medical knowledge and technology we have available to us?
But then again, it's not like any religious-based objection to anything scientific ever makes any sense, so I guess it'll just be one of those things that makes me shake my head with pity towards the delusional lunatics. They'd rather us be children, in the dark, ignorant, and completely and utterly afraid. F*ck 'em.
@Zeno #2 - there is a creationist "researcher" by the name of Todd Wood who theorized that a Biblical "kind" is approximately the same as "family" in regular biological taxonomy He's written some fairly lengthy and nonsensical rationalizations to "show" that all of life's animal species are descended from Noah's initial stock of about 1,000 (he guesses) so-called "kinds." And a lot of creationists cite his work. So, they reject evolution over the course of 3.8 billion years, but revel in the idea of super-accelerated evolution over the course of 6,000 years.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlAxSNZKWtwGCAE5O9KkiJdb4eMFPZ6j5o
|
May 22, 2010 12:56 PM
I don't see any hand-ringing from these crackpots about BP playing god. They foul the environment and heel drag to the extent that millions of creatures will be lost. Where is the concern by these professional "I need a fainting couch and a cold compress in order to deal with this" fuck wits?
Where is the concern about Pope "hey, you're finally tall enough to reach my penis, blessed are the little children"? He plays god all the time by lying about condoms and aids, by keeping sex offenders out of reach of the law.
How about that bishop in Arizona who played god by excommunicating the nun who approved the abortion that saved that womens life?
These people need some perspective and some education.
Posted by: badgersdaughter
|
May 22, 2010 12:58 PM
Oh, please. It could potentially lead to millions not being wiped out by plagues. It strikes me that the plague of ignorance, backwardness, and fear kills many more millions than any single disease is responsible for.
Posted by: Newfie
|
May 22, 2010 12:59 PM
Where are the scientific programmes driven from the beginning by explicit Christianity?
Posted by: llewelly
|
May 22, 2010 1:01 PM
I'm still waiting to be invaded by armies of cloned sheep. C'mon guys, what's holding them up?Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa)
|
May 22, 2010 1:02 PM
So, is it far-fetched to say they believe that Resident Evil was real?
Posted by: Peter Henderson
|
May 22, 2010 1:02 PM
Personally speaking, I reckon the resident evil series was better than I am legend, which was nothing more than a poor remake of the omega man.
Still, I find it strange that in US Sci Fi movies/TV series, the scientists are so often portrayed as the bogey men, lacking in all morality and ethics while the millitary are always the good guys who rescue humain kind from this unecessary evil.
Is this a reflection on how the US public somehow view evolutionary scientists ?
Posted by: sizzzzlerz
|
May 22, 2010 1:05 PM
How long until some rock-head GOP congressional critter from God's Wrath, GA, introduces a bill banning research into the creation of human-synthetic bacterium hybrids?
Posted by: llewelly
|
May 22, 2010 1:06 PM
Newfie | May 22, 2010 12:59 PM:
They're on Mount Ararat, finding fake arks.
Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe
|
May 22, 2010 1:07 PM
Er, what fallout from the cloning of Dolly the sheep? (Besides the hysteria of idiots). Are people cloning themselves new bodies in their garages and not telling me about it? Because if that's the case, I want in on it.
Posted by: csreid
|
May 22, 2010 1:08 PM
This. You would think that an all-knowing and all-powerful creator would be able to make his creations work without all the jerry-rigging we see. It reminds me of something else PZ posted a while back (I think the title was something like "Artificial Evolution Looks a Lot Like the Natural Kind". Unfortunately, I'm far too lazy to find it.) The idea was that someone had "evolved" a circuit to perform a specific task, and it worked really well. But when they looked in to see what it was doing, it didn't make any sense.
We, as intelligent designers, would have made the same circuit to be simple. Unintelligent processes did the job in a way that was - of course - unintelligible.
Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives
|
May 22, 2010 1:09 PM
Wasn't that the Winamp visualization? That was a cute little sheep.
Posted by: William
|
May 22, 2010 1:11 PM
Twelve Monkeys would have been such a better example than I Am Legend
Posted by: raven
|
May 22, 2010 1:13 PM
Well, there was the burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno and the near miss with Galileo for Heliocentrism.
Since then, there hasn't been much xian driven science. The secular authorities outlawed their two most important tools. Hanging and burning people at the stake.
Posted by: pitbone62
|
May 22, 2010 1:13 PM
I might be late to the party, but this is the first time I've seen a creationist actually define 'kind'. Can't we start using this as a definition and scoff with delight when they're forced to lug their goal posts all over the field. (Again.)
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 22, 2010 1:18 PM
Loathe as I am to appear to be siding with freaking D*mbski...
Wait. It's not just the chemicals in the cell they relied on. They relied on there being a cell in the first place. At minimum, prepackaged: a recently functioning membrane, intact ribosomes, and complete proteome (complete enough, anyway, for Mycoplasma, an obligate endoparasite with tiny size, no cell wall, and a consequently maximally reduced genome and very specific lab-culturing conditions (they are much more common in laboratories as cell-culture contaminants than as research subjects themselves)).
This is compelling at the molecular level of analysis. However, at a cell or organismal level, there is the crucial point that the Cell Theory tenet that all known cells come from other cells is intact. Arguably, so is the observation that all organisms have at least one parent organism.
I think the "not a truly synthetic cell" point is accurate.
For now.
Posted by: raven
|
May 22, 2010 1:21 PM
Sacrilege. Creationists are very modern these days. They do not "lug their goal posts all over the field."
They have them on motorized carts and they drive them around.
Posted by: llewelly
|
May 22, 2010 1:25 PM
Peter Henderson | May 22, 2010 1:02 PM:
If you were in Arizona, a remark like that would convince Officer Friendly to check your papers.
Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 1:31 PM
You know, there’s something about Venter’s latest magnum opus that’s still blowing my mind.
Every single cell of every single living organism on the face of the Earth, and every single cell of every single living organism for the past few billion years or so, has been the direct result of the division of a single original cell billions of years ago. We are all children of that original humble great-grandparent.
Until now.
Craig Venter and his team have created an alien.
For the first time in billions of years, there is an organism alive on this planet which is completely and totally unrelated to the rest of us.
Before this experiment, one could accurately make the statement that, if it’s alive, it’s your cousin.
Not any more.
This moment is as profound as they get.
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
Posted by: Snap
|
May 22, 2010 1:32 PM
@12 & 15
Exactly.
"one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague"
Because scientific advances totally lead to net INCREASES in people being wiped out by plagues.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawntEU60bc0__0bph263cXqvZgqX-Hoq7hQ
|
May 22, 2010 1:34 PM
Scientists playing imaginary mythical social constructs!
No shock, no horror.
Posted by: clonearmy
|
May 22, 2010 1:43 PM
The ETC Group is really starting to get on my nerves. Without fail, every time a microbiology lab announces a practical advance in synthetic biology, these publicity vultures are right there to wring their hands for the media and spin fanciful, unsubstantiated just-so stories about the Horrible Pink Goo What Will Destroy Us All.
I'd ask why they're not spending their effort on real ecological dangers, like the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or oceanic pollution in general, but sadly the answer is all too obvious -- it's much easier to sit back in one's armchair and spout fairytales than to put actual work into solving real problems.
Posted by: irenedelse
|
May 22, 2010 1:47 PM
Venter's synthetic bacterium may be more literate than some of the pearl-clutching critics quoted in the article. After all, it carries words by James Joyce in its genetic code:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/05/21/james-joyces-words-come-to-life-and-are-promptly-desecrated/
Posted by: Watson
|
May 22, 2010 1:50 PM
Several of these objections seem as churlish as being an eyewitness to the flight of the first Wright Flyer and then complaining that it can't hover or loop-the-loop.
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
|
May 22, 2010 1:51 PM
What is it with that name?Posted by: llewelly
|
May 22, 2010 1:51 PM
Ben Goren | May 22, 2010 1:31 PM:
Suppose there was a lab which had not heard of Venter's team's creation. Suppose they had a sample of the bacterium. Could they determine that it was not related to other life on Earth? No, because the tools that their disposal, such DNA comparisons, would show that it is related, as it's DNA is a (slightly sloppy) copy of that of an existing earth life form. (And, the very fact that it is DNA-based would argue in favor of it being related to traditional Earth life.)
Arguing that the creatures created by Venter's team are not related to traditional Earth life is like arguing that you aren't related to your cousin because she was conceived by artificial insemination.
Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 1:58 PM
llewelly, you miss my point.
Before now, there was an unbroken chain of cell division in every cell of every organism that led back to the universal common ancestor.
This new bacterial colony is the first exception to that chain since the time of the universal common ancestor.
And it certainly won’t be the last….
Cheers,
b&
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 22, 2010 2:03 PM
b&:
I disagree. See my comment above. The chain of cell division is unbroken.
Posted by: Lucian
|
May 22, 2010 2:05 PM
Well done PZ. I've been following this story as well and am equally frustrated by the ignorance of these fundies and creationists artards. Their backwards logic continues to astound me, (i should be used to it by now, eh?) Especially the little gem by Dembski, just awful. It's odd to me that such relatively "ground-breaking" research gets me to experience every flavor in the emotion spectrum; from anxious and excited when i first hear of it, to disgust and pessimism in my fellow man when I read their misinformed comments. Side note, I know someone will sympathize with me on this. The catholic church which i left years ago, the same one my folks still ask me to go to, had this classic creationist argument outside on their message board; "If man came from apes, then why are there still apes?"*(hand smaking forehead) If only i believed in a god, I'd pray for their lost souls.
Posted by: monado
|
May 22, 2010 2:08 PM
The answer to your first question is, No, they are not getting kickbacks. Popular culture is fed by fiction. It's well known that the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin" about lovable slaves did more for abolition than any number of impassioned speeches. Similarly but more destructively, the "Left Behind" series is feeding a man-uber-alles, end-of-the-world meme in U.S. culture & politics. What we need is a few good books about lovable atheists. As someone famous once said, to retain its impact the Good Samaritan should be re-told as the Good Homosexual or the Good Communist--or, I might add, the Good Atheist.
Posted by: 2020science
|
May 22, 2010 2:08 PM
Agree with you here, but was interested to hear Paul Nurse no less on BBC Radio 4 making a similar argument for this not being a synthetic organism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8696000/8696423.stmPosted by: marius
|
May 22, 2010 2:14 PM
Hey, doesn't the Bible tell us to go forth and multiply? We're doing it!
Posted by: viggen
|
May 22, 2010 2:17 PM
Maybe this is arguing semantics, but I would say that this organism is an end-point of evolution, not a midpoint. The suite of genes they duplicated are modern, meaning 3-4 billion years more advanced in selection than whatever was the precursor to life. While this organism can give hints to the minimum functionality necessary to maintain life, this says only the minimum functionality necessary to maintain a modern form of life. This does not even necessarily give hints to the conditions where primordial selection took place, it only says what the demands of efficient reproduction have ultimately been honed into. Maybe the progenator organisms in this line required more functional pieces to live originally, which were ultimately honed out or collected together during selection.
It is a really important technical advance which could lead to some amazing tools in the future, but special clues about the origins of life, it decidedly is not. The hints this thing gives are really no better than the hints given by any other modern life.
Posted by: george.wiman
|
May 22, 2010 2:35 PM
If it's bad to "play God", then someone should work on getting "God" to take his role a little more seriously. Up until WE started doing some of his work, average human lifespan was nasty, brutish and short. Still is, in places where they leave it all to God.
Posted by: ZK
|
May 22, 2010 2:38 PM
Accusing somebody of being a Daily Mail reader is a derogatory remark here in Blighty :-)
ZK
Posted by: deerhunter92
|
May 22, 2010 2:39 PM
"Frthrmr, cmplxty ds nt mply dsgn. Ntrl prcsss r qt gd t gnrtng cmplxty, vn bttr thn dsgn, s pntng t tht smthng s cmplx ds nt dstngsh btwn th tw hypthss. f hd n mgc wsh nd cld wk p ths dts t n thng, t's th smpl fct tht cmplxty nd dsgn r nt qvlnt stts."
Cmplxty s nt th ss nd nvr hs bn. Cmplxty s rd hrrng tht hs nthng t d wth vltn. Hghly cmplx systms cn b gnrtd by rndm prcsss, bt tht's nt vltn. Wht nds t b dn s t cnnct mttn nd slctn t th mrgnc f hghly rgnzd systms n whch nmrs strctrs nd prcsss prfrm fnctns tht spprt thr strctrs nd prcsss s wll s cntrbt t th vrll fnctn f th rgnsm. Rmmbr tht lvng rgnsms r bchmcl mchns wth chrctrstcs smlr t thr mchns. cmptr, fr xmpl hs pwr spply whs fnctn s t prdc vrs vltgs, dsk drvs fr strg, prcssr t d clcltns, mntr t prdc mgs, tc. ch f ths strctrs prfrms spcfc fnctns tht spprt thr strctrs nd ls spprt th vrll fnctnlty f th cmptr. N n wld vr mgn tht cmptr cld hv bn th rslt f rndm, ccdntl prcsss r tht t cld hv bn dsgnd nd blt wtht ntllgnt npt. Lvng rgnsms r n dffrnt. Hmns hv hrt t pmp bld, kdnys t rmv wsts, lngs t xchng gss, nd brn t drct ll f ths ctvts, ch f whch spprts th thr fnctns nd ls th vrll mntnnc f th lvng stt. Th dsgn nd ssmbly f sch mchn cld nt hv ccrrd wtht ntllgnt npt nymr thn yr cmptr cld hv blt tslf.
[Reeks of Charlie Wagner. Please refrain from commenting on his BS -- it makes cleaning up the threads awkward.]
Posted by: James F
|
May 22, 2010 2:45 PM
The creationists have delusions of scientific relevance.
On NPR, Venter noted that his aim wasn't to create life, but to develop a system for manipulating a minimal genome, a tool for both basic research and practical applications. Similarly, Doug Theobald wasn't out to disprove creationism with his statistical analysis, he was testing the impact of horizontal gene transfer on the concept of universal common ancestry.
Science has moved on to the advanced study courses, while the creationists are home watching The Flintstones.
Posted by: raven
|
May 22, 2010 2:47 PM
Ask the priest, "If Protestants came from Catholics, then why are there still Catholics?"
I'm sure he won't be amused. And you won't have to worry about being asked to show up there anymore.
Posted by: jidashdee
|
May 22, 2010 2:54 PM
@deerhunter92 (Paley Pedant)
Irreducible complexity (Behe) and the illusion of design (Paley) have both been slapped down so many times that it's getting really fucking boring.
Please read any of the following and trouble the world no more:
"Why Evolution is True" (Coyne)
"The Blind Watchmaker" (Dawkins)
"The Greatest Show on Earth" (Dawkins)
Posted by: clonearmy
|
May 22, 2010 2:56 PM
The design and assembly of such a machine could not have occurred without intelligent input anymore than your computer could have built itself.
Oh, but it very much did. For a particularly elegant example, you need look no farther than your own mitochondria -- descendants of a long-ago Proteobacteria that are now engaged in an endosymbiotic relationship with you and nearly every other eukaryote out there.
Posted by: Lucian
|
May 22, 2010 2:56 PM
It may not have been the Venter's or Theobald'd aim to disprove creationism, but any sort of advancement in genetics, especially one such as this, is going to be evidence against creationism. Hell, just mentioning the word bacteria should make them shake in their boots, after all, they've been around for about 3 billion years... a hell of alot longer than adam and eve.
Posted by: raven
|
May 22, 2010 2:56 PM
An assertion without proof. The common Fallacy, Argument from Incessant Lying.
People aren't assembled. They develop from single celled zygotes by well understood processes of growth and cell differentiation. No one has ever seen little angels running around in an amniotic sack, dragging cells around and telling them what to be.
And we've got the fossil evidence among tons of other data, that we evolved. You lost a century ago except among the ignorant and crazy religious kooks.
Posted by: Louis
|
May 22, 2010 3:01 PM
@ ZK #44,
Only to those with the wit to understand it. Most Daily Mail readers would reply "Yes. And?"
Sadly.
Louis
Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 3:02 PM
deerhunter92 wrote:
Don’t you realize that that’s just a paraphrase of, “I’m too fucking stupid to understand introductory-level evolutionary biology”?
Doesn’t it hurt to be such a blithering idiot? Aren’t you profoundly ashamed of your self-imposed stupidity? Wouldn’t you rather have even a hint of an inkling of a clue?
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
Posted by: PZ Myers
|
May 22, 2010 3:11 PM
Hmmm, Sven...I don't know about that. From a genetic perspective, the chain of cell division was broken -- that DNA was not produced by a mitotic event. The membrane/cytoplasm has continuity with cellular antecedents, but not the heritable material.
Posted by: Citizen Z
|
May 22, 2010 3:16 PM
I have to wonder what kind of movies you're watching. The cliche is the military is evil. There are some rare instances in sci fi movies where the military is good, but in those cases the military has limited screen time and is merely a deus ex machina for the real, civilian heroes of the film.
Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 3:16 PM
Hmm…that was supposed to be a gumby quote. Didn’t quite work. Here, let me try that again…
deerhunter92 wrote:
You, sir, are a poopyhead.
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
Posted by: va.terrero
|
May 22, 2010 3:18 PM
I love you.Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 3:21 PM
Well, I guess that’s closer, but still not quite it. Anybody have a good way of doing a gumby quote in the comments?
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
Posted by: Moggie
|
May 22, 2010 3:35 PM
I'm relieved to hear that the Daily Mail is against it. The Mail is a pretty reliable paper, in that it can be relied on to be wrong about almost everything. If it had come out in favour of Venter, I'd have been worried.
Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 3:38 PM
I suppose I should expand on my real point a bit. As PZ points out, there is continuity at the level of the cell’s infrastructure. But, at the same time, other viable cells and organisms — including entire sheep — have been created by manually swapping the DNA from one cell to another.
One might view earlier nuclear transplants as hairline fractures in the chain. Considering that, after enough generations, this newly-synthesized DNA is solely responsible for the cellular mechanisms, this can rightly be described as a full break of the chain. This will become obvious when Venter (or somebody else) starts tinkering with the genes that regulate cell structure.
When we can manufacture cell structures from scratch, that’ll mean we’ve forged a whole new chain…but that’s more of an afterthought than anything else. Of what significance is the chrysalis to the butterfly?
As with all such revolutions of this magnitude, the dividing line isn’t entirely black-and-white, even when the transition is dramatic. I don’t think there can be any doubt, though, that we’re now firmly on the other side of that line.
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
Posted by: Gregory Greenwood
|
May 22, 2010 3:42 PM
Oh look! Its a new logical fallacy, argumentum ad Hollywood.
Deerhunter92 @ 45;
I have one word for you; iterations. You are forgetting the timespan we are talking about here. Life has existed on Earth for roughly 3.5 billion years. This qualifies, I think it safe to say, as a long time.
Over this timeframe there have been a huge number of generations, a vast quantity of random genetic mutations. Each individual, 'throw' of the genetic 'dice' is random, but only those mutations that either confer an advantage or are not significantly harmful are passed on at all (recessive characteristics aside), while those mutations that grant a significant competitive advantage to their possessor result in a higher likelihood of successful procreation, and thus become more prevalent in the genome until they become a standard feature of that species.
Each structure you have described came about through a series of less developed stages because each stage conferred a competive advantage. The classic example is the eye.
Initially, the earliest eyes were simple patches of light-sensitive cells that allowed their possessor to tell light from darkness, and thereby have some limited sense of the state of its environs, and react to sudden shadows as a possible threat. Those that had the patches survived better than those who did not, and so the trait was passed on.
Later, through random mutation, one example of this species developed a pit where the patch of cells was. This enabled a degree of directionality in the sense; the lifeform could then roughly discern the direction of a light source. This mutation was advantageous, and so was passed on.
Through further mutation the pit deepened and began to narrow its aperture, thus allowing the formation of a rudimentary image. Even such simple, limited sight was a huge competetive advantage that gave its possessor a significant edge in terms of survival.
Further mutation resulted in a thin film of transluscent material closing the aperture and acting as a lense, clarifying and magnifying the image. Later still, colour rods formed by mutation, allowing for the use of colour data from the surroundings. The eye became ever more efficacious through advantageous mutations being kept and disadvantageous mutations being lost through natural selection until, over millions of years, the recognisable modern eyeball evolved.
No creator is necessary, the old 'tornadoe in a junk yard creating a 747' analagy is born of a failure to understand the process and the vast number of iterations and spans of time involved.
The computer, as an inert, constructed technology of human creation is a flawed comparison. But a biological 'computer' of staggering power and energy efficiancy did evolve, and we both possess one in our craniums. The brain initialy evolved as a means of controlling the various processes of the body, that became ever more complex in homanids as those mutations that resulted in a more complex brain made it easier for the early homanids to manipulate their environment and collaborate to survive against more physically powerful competing species and predators. Ultimately, the brain became so complex that sentience was achieved.
Once again, no creator required.
Posted by: Kevpod
|
May 22, 2010 4:02 PM
Isn't it ironic that the people and media outlets that were so wayward in opining about this development used correct punctuation (mostly), while PZ, who is right on the substance, didn't?
Posted by: Iname
|
May 22, 2010 4:05 PM
Really? They bring up the movie genre about a man-made disease wiping out humanity, and they choose I Am Legend? They could at least have chosen Stephen King's The Stand. Hell it even had god in the story. It practically writes itself. Hacks.
Posted by: PeteGrimes
|
May 22, 2010 4:12 PM
The WSJ has posted an 'ethics' poll about this:
http://online.wsj.com/community/groups/question-day-229/topics/does-creation-synthetic-life-create
Posted by: masksoferis
|
May 22, 2010 4:23 PM
Playing God, playing God, bah! We have morals; God has none. Clearly if "playing God" means making new life we and not God should be doing it.
Unless there's a scientist waiting with plans of Hells and Serpents and Floods and the like --- a cackling maniac who's just waiting for intelligent life he can bully around?
I say playing God is too important to be left to such proven incompetents as God.
Posted by: arensb
|
May 22, 2010 4:28 PM
Cue the creationist quote-miners.
Posted by: grudgedk
|
May 22, 2010 4:29 PM
Playing God? Really? Where in the bible does it say anything about God manipulating DNA? DNA isn't even mentioned in the fucking bible? Why? Because the hashish smoking, goat herders who dreamed up the myths didn't know what DNA was.
Posted by: Duncan
|
May 22, 2010 4:37 PM
It should come as no surprise to see those hyperbolic idiots at that most odious newspaper the daily mail that they are spouting anti-science nonsense.
Also, it's no surprise to see flawed arguments citing probablility, again.
Posted by: daedalus4u
|
May 22, 2010 4:44 PM
As far as "playing God" goes, isn't pretending to know His mind and pretending to speak for Him a little bit more egregious at the "playing God" stuff than making a copy of some junk?
Posted by: Big Atheist
|
May 22, 2010 4:59 PM
Since they keep saying Craig is "playing god" and this is a first at creating life on any real level, shouldn't we start calling it "playing Craig". Beside gods are imaginary, Craig is real!
Posted by: Ben Goren
|
May 22, 2010 5:13 PM
Big Atheist, biology is just one of the many games that gods play at.
The team of the Manhattan project was playing god; the Wright Brothers played god; doctors who administered anesthetics to women in labor played god…and, I’m sure, the first farmer to dig a canal to irrigate the crops was playing god, too.
Cheers,
b&
--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''
Posted by: machintelligence
|
May 22, 2010 5:17 PM
The comment from Dumbski Dembski was to be expected, but where is the prediction of dire consequences from Jeremy Rifkin?
Posted by: fly44d
|
May 22, 2010 5:22 PM
I wish the god who is playing with my CPU usage whenever I am in Pharyngula would quit it. It is fine everywhere else in scienceblogs, just Pharyngula top page. Some HTML coder have a god complex?
Posted by: Al B. Quirky
|
May 22, 2010 5:31 PM
If whatever it was that caused the Universe to start existing, didn't want us to cook up our own designer DNA, he needn't have given us such big brains to work out how to do it. Like nuclear energy, its how we use it that is good/evil.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkWfzBW7KGM8B2TPA5xerOM_sA2DEQHd3E
|
May 22, 2010 5:36 PM
The Catholic church, perhaps unsurprisingly since they've been burning people in the past in the conflict between science and religion...
Fixed it for you.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 5:37 PM
I wish the god who is playing with my CPU usage whenever I am in Pharyngula would quit it.
are you using an ad-blocker?
If not, try that.
the cpu spikes can be due to processing flash ad banners sometimes.
Posted by: GravityIsJustATheory
|
May 22, 2010 5:56 PM
That's what I thought.
In my experience, frequently the military's role is to respond to any outbreak of plague / vampirism / etc by wanting to drop a nuke on it, and its up to the heroes to find a cure before the bomb-happy generals get their way.
(Or alternatively its the military that caused the disaster in the first place, as in that abomination The Core).
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
|
May 22, 2010 5:59 PM
Why do those who say that my watch, computer, whatever was obviously designed, never, NEVER, NEVER consider that those items were CLEARLY designed by more than one individual. The component parts were themselves CLEARLY designed by a committee. Therefore the same MUST apply to living things. There MUST be a liver god and a skin god and several genital gods and ...
*slap*
Thanks, I needed that.
Posted by: Vene
|
May 22, 2010 6:04 PM
@#20
I found your link
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/artificial_evolution_looks_an.php
Posted by: redliterocket4
|
May 22, 2010 6:19 PM
Extracting energy or other resources from non-living matter for human use is one thing (which itself already has disconcerting ecological consequences when we fail to appreciate that we are one among many species on this planet), but when we're dealing with living organisms, an existential line has been crossed. Life is not just chemistry, it marks the point where matter becomes sentient and exhibits purposive organization. Granted, we're still dealing with bacteria here, and most people probably have trouble empathizing with a microscopic germ, but maybe we should be cautious not to fool ourselves into thinking living creatures are just machines awaiting engineering improvements by humans. Isn't anyone else the slightest bit concerned by the prospect of a slave labor force of mutant creatures designed to produce corporate profit? Human lives may be saved, no doubt; but it seems more than a bit hubristic to treat living beings as nothing more than ends to our economic needs. We need a bioethics that is responsive to non-human forms of life, as well.
This tongue in cheek statement may just conceal a profound mystical truth. Has PZ been reading Meister Eckhart and Jakob Boehme or something? Of course scientists are "playing God." The whole meaning of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution could be summed up as the transfer of authority and freedom from God in heaven to the mind of man. It is not human beings who have become responsible for the fate of life on earth.
Andrew Brown's statement about information is fascinating. Information is not just physical stuff, it is the meaning exhibited by the patterns inhering in physical stuff. When it comes to living organization, we're not just dealing with matter in motion; we're dealing with semiotic processes of interpretation. It seems that nature is intrinsically meaningful, despite materialist claims that the human mind (itself conveniently judged to be an improbable fluke!) projects meaning on an otherwise unintelligent universe.
Posted by: redliterocket4
|
May 22, 2010 6:24 PM
Oops, should have read: treat living beings as nothing more than "means" to our economic needs, not "ends."
Posted by: DanishDynamite
|
May 22, 2010 6:29 PM
Venter's achievement should give any thinking person goose-pimples. Much good can come from it but the ability to design any form of life you want, inherently has very dangerous potential.
Getting at least a few eggs out of the Earth-basket just became even more urgent.
Posted by: Tulse
|
May 22, 2010 6:32 PM
You mean like cows?
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 6:34 PM
inherently has very dangerous potential.
you people must have imaginations I do not.
transgenics have been around for decades, the places they are researched and used have stringent regulation regarding them, minor crossovers have been anticipated and dealt with.
so, it really isn't like we haven't had these issues to deal with already...
and look!
the world has NOT ended.
so, where is this hyperimaginatory "dangerous potential", because frankly, I don't see it.
spin us a tale, at least.
don't just give us "jazz-hands"
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 6:36 PM
it is the meaning exhibited by the patterns inhering in physical stuff.
there is no meaning in this statement, regardless of whether the word is included in it.
Posted by: redliterocket4
|
May 22, 2010 6:37 PM
Tulse, yes, like cows. Factory farming is ethically repulsive, if you ask me. Not only that, it is the leading cause of greenhouse producing gases.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 6:39 PM
profound mystical truth
oxymoron.
I vow to physically slap the next person I meet who says this phrase, because it's entirely insipid and inane.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
May 22, 2010 6:41 PM
Isn't redliterocket4 sophist philosopher Matthew Seagal? That would explain the oxymorons.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 6:43 PM
spin us a tale, at least.
example:
at least in the original thread, I tongue-in-cheek mentioned "Blood Music".
complete nonsense sci-fi (at least it's a short book, and shows imagination), but you all professing imminent doom could at least point us to which particular fictional tales seem to have given you the heebie-jeebies.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
May 22, 2010 6:45 PM
Andrew Brown vented:
The word "materialism" is rarely used except by its opponents. Scientists don't use it since they take it for granted the world is an integrated whole. This doesn't require rejecting a spurious "natural/supernatural" dualism because it isn't scientifically observed.
Information theory is not a new concept. According to the font of all knowledge, wikipedia, it was first promulgated in 1948. It's widely used for data analysis. Ventner is hardly the first biologist to use information theory.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 6:46 PM
Isn't redliterocket4 sophist philosopher Matthew Seagal?
I believe you are correct.
I knew it sounded familiar. Still, it obviously isn't the only one playing at being chicken little today.
Posted by: amphiox
|
May 22, 2010 6:53 PM
But the ability to unleash the incredible energy of the oxidation reaction, the fundamental energy source of life itself, inherently has very dangerous potential.
Hell, forget "potential". The discovery of fire directly led to the deaths of billions.
Posted by: Sioux Laris
|
May 22, 2010 7:04 PM
The Guardian, which featured this story as the big deal it is, then offered up (rightly, though I was afraid of what it would be like - and was unfortunately not wrong) other scientists' views. They played devil's advocates and pooh-poohed the significance in a rather annoying and somehow dishonest way as "nothin' so new."
I expected nothing at all from any "conservative," whether in the press (the Daily Mail? Why not Weekly World News or the Watchtower?) or the my-income-comes-from-religious-lying pulpit. Having set the bar low enough, they were able to meet expectations.
Posted by: DanishDynamite
|
May 22, 2010 7:06 PM
so, where is this hyperimaginatory "dangerous potential", because frankly, I don't see it
You don't see the dangerous potential in being able to manufacture any form of virus/bacteria that you want?
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 7:07 PM
You don't see the dangerous potential in being able to manufacture any form of virus/bacteria that you want?
like i said...
hyperimaginatory.
I rather like that word, especially since it's entirely made up.
Posted by: clonearmy
|
May 22, 2010 7:11 PM
transgenics have been around for decades
s/around/used in medicine. Cf. infliximab, a chimeric (mouse-human) monoclonal antibody approved by the FDA since 1998 for treatment of Crohn's disease and, more recently, several different forms of arthritis. The "mutant creatures designed to produce corporate profit" ship sailed long ago -- and countless autoimmune disorder and cancer patients are tremendously glad it did.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
|
May 22, 2010 7:19 PM
I eagerly await a slave labor force of mutant creatures designed to eat oil spills and metabolize it into beer.
Or ones that breathe in the extra CO2 and poot-out my-little-ponies of the fly unicorn
varietykind. Bacon flavored.Posted by: DaveL
|
May 22, 2010 7:19 PM
Wait, what? How can anyone compare the splitting of the atom to the cloning of a sheep?
On the one hand, we have a discovery that led to the development of the most horrifically destructive weapons in history, weapons that for the first time made it entirely possible for human beings to turn the earth into an uninhabitable rockball.
On the other hand we have... a fucking sheep.
Over here, global annihilation. Over there, a petting zoo staple. Over there, Chernobyl. Over here, gyro dressing.
Yup. Same thing.
Posted by: DanishDynamite
|
May 22, 2010 7:25 PM
like i said...
hyperimaginatory.
I rather like that word, especially since it's entirely made up.
I'm guessing this means No.
So a wind-born Super-Ebola is not possible?
Posted by: zondi
|
May 22, 2010 7:28 PM
I, while being a big fan of this blog, have created an account mainly for the purpose of bitch about the fact that Jack Daniels ran an add campaign in the UK that said "Paris got fashion, Tennessee got whiskey" no. No oh please no. Scotland got whiskey! They bloody invented it, and they have most of the good ones. Tennessee you sicken me.
Posted by: Sastra
|
May 22, 2010 7:36 PM
redliterrocket #82 wrote:
I think you're equivocating between different meanings of the word "meaning."
You're also reifying an abstraction, and anthropomorphising. Nature is no more intrinsically "meaningful" than it is intrinsically rational, or intrinsically hungry.
Posted by: jcmartz.myopenid.com
|
May 22, 2010 7:53 PM
This sort of idiocy is to be expected. However, if Venter wants to play god, the he has to be Prometheus.
Furthermore,
But God (presumably Yahweh), is already out of the scientific universe. So, this is just nonsense.
In other news, Copernicus finally gets recognition from the RCC.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
|
May 22, 2010 8:02 PM
zondi @101
I feel your pain. If you take this to The Endless Thread we can discuss it. Link to thread is a few lines down, under PZ's picture.
This thread is for
yelling aboutdiscussing synthetic germs.Posted by: rick.price84
|
May 22, 2010 8:09 PM
Wow, that poker analogy was brilliant, I'm stealing that for the next time I get accosted by a fundie.
Posted by: Who Cares
|
May 22, 2010 8:11 PM
Seeing this makes me proud about the local newspaper. It got the facts right. That it wasn't artificial life but an artificial set of genes implanted into a cell where the original ones were removed. That this on it's own was quite a feat but still quite a bit away from true a synthetic cell
Posted by: szwagier.myopenid.com
|
May 22, 2010 8:30 PM
This appeared as a link on Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True blog, and it seems to me to be absolutely germane to this discussion.
Posted by: Dae
|
May 22, 2010 9:09 PM
The first thing that occurred to me with respect to the objection that we're opening the way to SUPERDUPERMEGA GERMS was, if we were going to create a horrific disease, there are much easier ways to do it. Start with a microbe that is already good at killing humans, subject it to however many iterations necessary of various types of selective pressure to make it even better at killing humans (i.e. more virulent, more drug-resistant, etc). Designing one from the ground up is inefficient and extremely expensive.
Somehow I don't think this argument would be too comforting to the alarmists, though....
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 9:12 PM
So a wind-born Super-Ebola is not possible?
It was possible 40 years ago (or something like it based on smallpox).
has fuck all to do with this bit of work.
like i said...
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 22, 2010 9:14 PM
That this on it's own was quite a feat but still quite a bit away from true a synthetic cell
...and after the artificial genome gets finished replacing the existing parts of the cell with the ones produced by the artificial genome...
it's a fucking synthetic cell.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnzYFSRFGBVc7i7Ah_p05XVo1r8TIQ4dn8
|
May 22, 2010 9:25 PM
What??? Daily Mail readers watch Will Smith films??
Posted by: Nepenthe
|
May 22, 2010 9:37 PM
Life is not just chemistry, it marks the point where matter becomes sentient and exhibits purposive organization.
While I share your concern to some degree (a very very low degree), it seems worth pointing out that bacteria are not sentient in any meaningful sense. They can react to chemical signals from the environment, but so can a test tube full of phenophthaline. They cannot sense or experience pain.
If we have a slave army of bacteria, no one will care, least of all the bacteria.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmqD_mcUIrSfOTlK3iGVsnEDcZmI43srbI
|
May 22, 2010 9:40 PM
I said this on Coyne's blog and I'll say it here.
This advance is NOT evidence of "playing god".
It's evidence of "playing human".
We're the species that looks under the rock, tastes the bug to see if it's delicious, learns how to make fire, tastes the meat that falls into the fire, learns how to make spears and atom bombs and the internet, and now cells.
This is quintessential human behavior.
Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe
|
May 22, 2010 9:59 PM
filthy, despicable liars.The goo is blue. I've seen pictures.
your fetish for the idiotic American punctuation has been duly noted; again. It will not result in anyone adopting it; again.Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
|
May 22, 2010 10:18 PM
At 113:
I've been waiting hundreds of years to hear somebody say just that.
Thank you.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
May 22, 2010 10:31 PM
And you don't look a day over 150.
Posted by: csreid
|
May 22, 2010 10:35 PM
@Vene, #80:
Yes, that one. Thanks!
@redliterocket, #82:
Well... since my deconversion, I've thought a lot about that. Perhaps its just a matter of semantics, but I wonder if bacterial life actually is, in fact, just chemistry (I wonder that about myself, too, but I think that's just my fresh-atheist nihilism kicking in). If it is more than chemistry, what makes it so?
On the other hand, I certainly agree that, at some point, it becomes highly unethical to take advantage of another organism. Cows? Certainly. Sea sponges? Probably not. Jellyfish? Maybe, but I lean towards the negative. Bacteria? Almost certainly not. As Nepenthe said in #112, the bacteria haven't got the slightest clue of anything at all.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
|
May 22, 2010 10:40 PM
"And you don't look a day over 150."
Nor do I feel a day over, Tis. ; ^)
Posted by: Die Anyway
|
May 22, 2010 10:52 PM
> "pullitoutofmybuttology"
ROTFLMAO
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
|
May 22, 2010 10:57 PM
What I actually look like is someone who is delighted that the Celtics are seriously kicking the Magic's ass and that what has been done is to inform everyone who might be interested that the details of biology are amenable to inspection and manipulation.
Like wood to a carpenter, steel to a smith.
tee hee
Posted by: lenoxuss
|
May 22, 2010 11:00 PM
#87 redliterocket4:
Then philosophically speaking, that's your problem — the suffering of the cattle and the inducing of climate change. Those are both quite reasonable concerns! However, they seem disconnected from the notion that creating synthetic life would be inherently unethical.
Frankenstein is a book I admit I have not read beginning to end. I once heard this interesting analysis of it: that the title scientist's sin is not so much the creation of the monster (playing God) as it is the mistreatment of it (being a bad father).
Surely it's possible to create an artificial creature without subjecting it to factory-farming conditions? If not, and humanity just can't help itself from abusing whatever life it makes once said life is made, we might as well say that it can't help itself from making life in the first place, and thusly arguing against any of it is moot. I prefer to think that slippery slopes can be stopped before you have children marrying teacups or whatever. ;)
Redliterocket4's quote that started this line of the conversation is this:
The problem here is the clustering of several different things: "slave labor", "corporate profit", and "mutant". I can't help but feel that the narrative of the first two things is to some extent constructed post hoc to justify our natural moral repulsion to the "mutant" part.
Tulse's point about cows is, in my opinion, best taken not as "But you're OK with slave cows, right?", but rather as "Cows (not to mention dozens of other species) manage to fit this narrative without being mutants, hence the mutant part is irrelevant." It's similar to the points raised on this forum regarding oil spills; we're already playing God, the moral trick is to figure out how to play God well. (Which we clearly don't always do.)
The atomic bomb is inherently nothing but a weapon, a horrible one, and as such should quite possibly never even have been built. Even more so, however, it should never have been used.
This is perhaps unsophisticated on my part, but I believe that the fates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are primarily arguments against the use/development of nuclear weapons, more than they are against, say, the development of special relativity, or any other scientific advancement.
Posted by: Shirudo
|
May 22, 2010 11:06 PM
...TLDR...got halfway before shiny object caught my attenti--*runs off*
Posted by: Crudely Wrott , Drinking Solo Since Death's Back On The Wagon
|
May 22, 2010 11:17 PM
@121:
Suppose we had stopped with the spear (it is a nasty weapon, isn't it).
How safe are you? Your family? How able are you to feed them?
Riddle me history now. Tell me how you fare. With naught but a pointy stick.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 22, 2010 11:31 PM
Agreed.
The DNA was not produced by replication (prokaryotes don't do mitosis, as you know).
Unless you can define a cell as its genetic material, however, it's not a synthetic cell.
It's a cell with a synthetic genome.
Not the same thing.
IMO.
Posted by: stvs
|
May 22, 2010 11:43 PM
“If we don’t play God, who will?” —James Watson
Andrew Brown's imbecilic remarks on information—he insists that information isn't physical—were particularly difficult to stomach.
Posted by: Mattir-ritated
|
May 23, 2010 12:14 AM
Thinking about the Great Pink Goo Threat this afternoon, I realized that the environmental disasters that seem most horrific to me are the ones caused by engineering hubris and/or mineral extraction (the BP disaster and river channelization) and non-scientist stupidity (prophylactic antibiotics in livestock). Insanely malevolent molecular biologists seem to be a fairly small problem. So as long as the actual scientists remain in charge, all should be well.
Venter's accomplishment fills me with awe, albeit the non-religious kind.
Posted by: John Scanlon FCD
|
May 23, 2010 12:27 AM
lenoxuss, mistreating the little monsters is indeed playing (in the method-acting sense) the biblical god to a tee. Ever hear of Eve? Job? Isaac? ...
Posted by: Tulse
|
May 23, 2010 12:50 AM
So you are a complete vegan?
(For the record, I'm vegetarian for largely ethical reasons, but I have also enslaved a Chesapeake Bay Retriever and an Italian Greyhound, and while neither of these mutant creatures "labor" in any real sense, I suppose their presence nonetheless makes me evil.)
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 12:59 AM
Unless you can define a cell as its genetic material, however, it's not a synthetic cell.
doesn't that exactly ignore his point?
after a few replications, the material used in making the cell is entirely based on the synthetic genome.
how is it then NOT synthetic at that point?
In fact, this already has happened with that cell line, so we are really talking about a synthetic organism as I write this.
Posted by: S
|
May 23, 2010 1:35 AM
Posted by: mick.long
|
May 23, 2010 3:28 AM
"the synthetic bacterium was built by design, therefore all life was designed".
Translation, "what you are doing is evil and sciency and makes our heads hurt, but we will still misunderstand what you are doing, misquote you and try to use your latest sciency evilness to push our mouldering creotard agenda."
Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom
|
May 23, 2010 4:22 AM
Whenever I hear bullshit like this, I just think of Caveman Science Fiction:
http://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 4:59 AM
"the synthetic bacterium was built by design, therefore all life was designed".
"I started this fire with a match, therefore all fires are started by design."
*yawn*
it's a truly pathetic piece of logic that only people whose heads are filled with houses of cards would accept.
Posted by: One Furious Llama
|
May 23, 2010 5:47 AM
Making assumptions and building arguments on misunderstandings, poor research and blatant lies are par for the course after all.
It makes me sad that I'm going to have to read about these things so often from now one. Meh.
@133 Ramen.
Posted by: Slotos
|
May 23, 2010 6:46 AM
There's something that really disgusts me in this whole deal - the calls for society being not ready for this achievement and accompanying ethical problems.
When you see a rock falling on your head you don't complain about not being ready, you move. Ignorance isn't an answer to progress. Unless it's 1984.
Posted by: Redhill
|
May 23, 2010 8:11 AM
Well said at 113 - its "playing human".
As others have suggested, the "playing god" phrase usually emanates from folk who claim to be speaking on behalf of that entity.
In other words people who say they are concerned about others "playing god" are usually playing at speaking for god with the aim of promoting fear among the credulous and staking out a claim for themselves to have some kind of authority over the playing field in question.
Posted by: Bjarne
|
May 23, 2010 8:55 AM
I've just stumbled over this kind of ill-informed propaganda in my local newspaper. The comment is titled "Seelenlos (soulless)" in a most populist manner:
http://www.wz-newsline.de/sro.php?redid=838045
Connected with it is a poll asking "Darf die Wissenschaft Gott spielen (Is science allowed to play god?"
http://www.wz-newsline.de/index.php?redid=100160
As soon as I am a bit less pissed, I'll write some mail to the "journalist", who authored it.
Posted by: mwsletten
|
May 23, 2010 9:53 AM
I've never believed the 'playing at God' hand wringing. I can't believe God would be concerned. After all, didn't He create man in His image according to the Bible?
If so, then He certainly wouldn't be surprised or upset by Craig Venter's accomplishment -- I would think His face right now would be split with a smile of paternal pride!
I suspect the 'playing at God' concern of Christians is a bit more earthly in origin. I suspect it has much more to do with a lurking, overriding fear the work of people like Craig Venter will ultimately lead to accomplishments that far outshine the rather puny and pitiful deeds of the God chronicled in the Bible.
Humans --hell, the Mythbusters -- can already reproduce the majority of the rather prosaic 'miracles' that proved God's existence to a group of half-starved goatherds. The miracle of creation Mr. Venter has taken the first steps toward demonstrating is simply one more notch on the slide-rule, and one more buttress removed from the pedastal on which the Christian God has rested quietly for the last two millenia.
Ben@28: Profound sir, very profound!
Posted by: CortxVortx
|
May 23, 2010 9:54 AM
Inspector: You are playing God.
Dr. Hfuhruhurr: Somebody has to!
Posted by: dutchdoc
|
May 23, 2010 10:01 AM
Re.: PZ's
Is PZ of the opinion that Mathematics is not science?
I'm sure Andrew Wiles would be really disappointed to hear about PZ's statement above.
Posted by: dutchdoc
|
May 23, 2010 10:03 AM
"If we don't play God, who will?"
-- James Watson
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
|
May 23, 2010 10:42 AM
math as science
http://xkcd.com/435/
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 23, 2010 11:07 AM
No. I already dealt with his original point: at no point was the chain of cell division broken. Cell Theory was not violated. If the question is about cells then the answer has to be no, it's not a synthetic cell.
Then he moved the goalpost to "genetically speaking" the chain was broken. With that I agreed. Ventner et al. successfully synthesized a genome.
But then they inserted the genome into a pre-existing cell. I repeat: unless you define a cell as its genome--which no biologist does--then now it's a cell with a synthetic genome, not a synthetic cell.
Now back to the first point: what about several generations later, when all "the material used in making the cell is entirely based on the synthetic genome"?
My answer again: It's not a synthetic cell, because every cell in its ancestry was formed by normal binary-fission cell division. If we are talking about cells, you have to focus on cells; you can't do the reductionist drop to molecules for a few steps in the continuum and then jump back up for the better headline.
To make a synthetic cell, you'd have to start with something that's not yet a cell already. Not true in this case. It's not a synthetic cell.
IMO.
Posted by: lenoxuss
|
May 23, 2010 11:49 AM
#127 John Scanlon FCD: No disagreement here! God is an awful father. I just meant "playing God" in the sense people usually mean it — namely, creating life by "unnatural" means.
I know I also used the word "sin", a concept I don't actually think has any reality. Maybe a better word would have been "offense". There just aren't any good secular equivalents. I need a word that means "small or large acts of wrongdoing, the smaller of which are all committed by fallible humans all the time". ("Crime", for example, strictly connotes illegality.)
#123 Crudely Wrott:
(Warning: Pompous lecture ahead.)
Slippery slope arguments are fallacious in both directions, because almost everything you can name exists on a continuum, not in discrete parts.
Just because Justifiable Action A could lead, by slippery means, to Unjustifiable Action Z (in a chain where each event potentially justifies the next one) does not mean either that A is "really" unjustifiable (the usual slippery slope argument) or that Z is really justifiable (the reverse slippery slope). You simply have to pick an arbitrary but reasonable cutoff point.
In the US, citizens can vote at age 18. This is arbitrary; nothing special happens to the brain or body at midnight on one's 18th birthday. Perhaps it should be raised to 21, or lowered to 16. But raising it to 30 wouldn't make much sense, and neither would lowering it to 0. One could make a "slippery slope" argument in either direction, but this would be erroneous. The discussion should focus on the actual ages under debate, not hypothetical extremes.
In the continuum of reasonable defense systems, I believe that atomic weaponry happens to be beyond the pale, except perhaps as a deterrent to other atomic weaponry. It is not used to "feed your family", to protect your home from steet gangs, or even (IMO) to protect your country or other countries from invaders. Atomic bombs are used to convert cities into hellscapes, or at least threaten to do so.
I hold the following three beliefs on the subject. The first I hold very, very weakly. The second I hold with moderate strength. The third I hope never to be talked out of.
1. The Manhattan Project should not have developed the A-bomb.
2. The bomb should not have been dropped on Hiroshima, at least not without having first shown Japanese ambassadors a demonstration of it.
3. Following Hiroshima, the bomb should not have been dropped on Nagasaki.
Now, all that said, one can certainly validly argue in favor of the bomb and its past, present, or future use. Perhaps there is no Unjustifiable Event Z in the scale of weponry destructiveness! But that's an entirely different discussion than one about pointy sticks. Feel free to list the merits of the A-bomb and other such devices; I personally might not respond because that's a conversation I've already had a couple times, though it's an interesting conversation nonetheless. :)
Posted by: kev_s
|
May 23, 2010 2:05 PM
The fact that it carries the words of Joyce in its genome is a nice provocation of IDers who would dearly love a clear 'signature' from their imaginary creator. I bet the first fundy that gets his hands on the technology will be miraculously 'discovering' bacteria with 'Made by God' written in the genome and a cross as the registered trade mark.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/tL1MkU0ghY0gNMrxrvSjJFsEYJYQ0ZIPjQ--#5f870
|
May 23, 2010 2:19 PM
Please, please we need a stealth anti-god gene.
Where can I help fund such an important goal?
Posted by: Knockgoats
|
May 23, 2010 4:37 PM
...and after the artificial genome gets finished replacing the existing parts of the cell with the ones produced by the artificial genome... - Ichthyic
acting in concert with the existing non-genomic composition and structure of the cell...
This is an absolutely clear borderline case ;-) - it's not a synthetic cell, but it's not a nonsynthetic one either!
What range of genomes could be placed in this type of "emptied" cell (a mycoplasma), and work? I'm sure you couldn't give it the code for a eukaryote and expect it to work, but how wide a range of bacterial genomes would do so. Conversely (and more directly relevant to what has and has not been achieved), what range of emptied cells could you put this synthetic genome in and expect it to work? If this range is narrow, then quite a lot of the information necessary to construct a mycoplasma is to be found in the structure and non-genomic composition of mycoplasma cells.
Like someone upthread, I heard Paul Nurse talking this down on Today on BBC Radio 4 - it's not a synthetic cell, and in practical terms, whatever can be done in this way can be done more easily using existing tehcniques. Of course, this could be professional jealousy (although Nurse is a Nobelist), but it's been my impression Venter is a very good scientist - but a truly great self-publicist.
Posted by: naddyfive
|
May 23, 2010 4:55 PM
'Nature' rearranges genomes/recombines genes all the time.
Why are we supposed to be outraged that humans figured out how to do it, again?
I mean, I've heard all of the apocryphal stories about bacterial strains that could wipe out every crop on the planet, etc. But those are just urban legends, and sadly, the only thing like a coherent argument against transgenesis I've ever heard.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 5:18 PM
acting in concert with the existing non-genomic composition and structure of the cell...
there are no linger any existing non-synthetic parts of the cell left.
sorry, this argument simply doesn't wash AFAICT.
it would be like saying cars assembled robotically are still "human made", since humans made the robots.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 5:22 PM
and in practical terms, whatever can be done in this way can be done more easily using existing tehcniques.
5 bucks said the person you were listening to didn't bother to explain this.
there's a reason for that.
Sorry, but what Ventner did here IS unique.
no, there is no other way to artificially construct a genome... since it's never been done before.
the person you were listening to... is simply wrong.
Posted by: Knockgoats
|
May 23, 2010 5:38 PM
5 bucks said the person you were listening to didn't bother to explain this. - Ichthyic
Well, that person is Paul Nurse - and if I have to choose between your unargued assertion and his - guess which way I'm leaning? (But I'm not unpersuadable.)
I don't have a recording, so I can't repeat exactly what he said but the gist was - anything we might want to do technically or scientifically, that this might help us do, can be done more easily in other ways. Of course, if your aim is to do exactly what Venter has done, there's no other way to do it.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 5:42 PM
Well, that person is Paul Nurse - and if I have to choose between your unargued assertion and his - guess which way I'm leaning? (But I'm not unpersuadable.)
feel free to look up his work to see if he has actually done anything similar.
I'll keep this 5 bucks here, waiting.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 5:56 PM
...just because someone with a nobel in cell microbiology simply says "jump", I'm not gonna do it without anaylzing if I will hit my head.
I've looked at what Ventner did here.
It's unique.
it's an entirely artificially constructed, FUNCTIONING complete genome.
nobody has ever even tried to do it before.
I'm not sure exactly why so many people want to say more, and less, about what this is and what it represents, but I have yet to see any supported arguments that it is anything more or less than what Ventner himself says it is.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 5:58 PM
...and i don't know why i keep typing "Ventner"
:p
Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD)
|
May 23, 2010 6:04 PM
We should play God. We're better qualified.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 6:09 PM
and, again, I have yet to see an argument better than PZ himself makes in the OP:
So, if after a period of time, you've got a cell whose DNA was produced by a machine, and whose membranes, enzymes, structural proteins, and metabolic by-products were all produced by that machine-generated DNA or the protein products of that DNA, what makes it a non-synthetic cell?
so, what makes it a non-synthetic cell?
it seems a simple question to me, but nobody saying it isn't an artificial organism has actually answered it yet.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 23, 2010 6:24 PM
Ichthyic: see my #143.
Questions about cells have to be answered at the level of cells. If you started with something that was already a cell, then you haven't synthesized a cell. You've stuck a synthesized genome in a pre-existing cell. Generations down the line, neither the cell nor the DNA has been synthesized. Only the nucleotide pattern remains from the synthesized genome.
Nurse's point is that nothing practical can be accomplished this way (by synthesizing an entire genome) that can't already be done more easily (by inserting genes of interest into naturally replicated genomes).
None of this diminishes Ventner et al.'s accomplishment, just celebrates it for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 6:29 PM
My answer again: It's not a synthetic cell, because every cell in its ancestry was formed by normal binary-fission cell division.
then every fire formed by kindling is still based on kindling.
every car built by robots is still "human built."
nope, as soon as the cellular machinery is replaced by that generated from a purely synthetic genome, it's ancestry is NO LONGER based on a naturally occurring mitosis, but rather an artificially created one.
If you started with something that was already a cell
but it wasn't a complete cell, for one.
Generations down the line, neither the cell nor the DNA has been synthesized. Only the nucleotide pattern remains from the synthesized genome.
AND all the parts of the cell that were constructed using the artificially created blueprint.
no, you actually haven't addressed this point at all.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 23, 2010 6:32 PM
Did they synthesize an organism? That's a tougher question. I kind of think yes, at the organismal level, this is something that has never before existed, and they made it in the lab. But they didn't synthesize a cell.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 6:37 PM
...hit submit accidentally...
...again, if i create a line of robots to create and assemble a car, and replace all the human elements used in creating that car, it is now an entirely artificially constructed car.
Nurse's point is that nothing practical can be accomplished this way (by synthesizing an entire genome) that can't already be done more easily (by inserting genes of interest into naturally replicated genomes).
again, this is incorrect. Venter's team used a computer to completely sequence a functional, unique, genome.
this is NOT another simple case of genetic recombination on a larger scale.
just celebrates it for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.
huh?
*right reasons*?
no, i rather think this is being entirely too dismissive.
it's not Beethoven's 5th, but it ain't whistling dixie, either.
this does represent an alternative method to gene recombination that has not been tried before, and seeing as it has been successful, does indeed suggest new avenues to follow that previously would not be considered.
Posted by: PZ Myers
|
May 23, 2010 6:41 PM
Let's come at it from a different direction. Imagine that we want to build a synthetic membrane and cytoplasm from scratch. How would we do it?
I'd suggest that the only way would be use yeast or some other microorganism as a little factory: stuff genes into them for things like the ribosomal proteins you want, the structural proteins you want, the enzymes you want, and put them to work making the gene products that you would then purify. Mix them up, add lipids to self-assemble into micelles, then inject your chromosomes into them and hope the right recipe inside will jump start transcription and get the whole thing going.
It's a lot of relatively uninteresting work to produce the exact same thing you'd get if you just hijacked a convenient existing cell to bootstrap the genome. And after a few generations, it would be indistinguishable from Venter's cell.
One way to think about is that they are synthesizing a cell...they're just using a well-established molecular technique of using existing cellular machinery to build it in vivo.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 6:42 PM
Did they synthesize an organism?
no.
they synthesized a robot (genome).
the robot synthesized an organism, using existing parts, broken down and remade, along with the uptake of new material from external sources.
so, it's a semantic argument to say that Venter did not create a synthetic organism.
again, if I make a robot that has blueprints for constructing a car, and it uses an old car, and recycles it to make a new one that is based on the blueprint the robot has...
I would say the robot made the new car, based on the blueprint I gave it.
you can't really say that the new car really has much to do with how the old car was made, other than the old car had the right materials to make the new one at hand.
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 6:46 PM
Did they synthesize an organism? That's a tougher question.
sorry, I need to consider that a little deeper.
why is there a difference in saying they constructed an organism over they constructed a cell?
I must be missing some subtle part of your argument here?
Posted by: Ichthyic
|
May 23, 2010 6:56 PM
meh, I'll come back to this later.
I'm not "celebrating" whether or not this is an artificial lifeform, but rather the technique used in creating it, myself, which to my mind opens up some previous unthought-of avenues. So, it takes a fuckton of work to accomplish today. Tommorrow it might just be the next best thing to PCR.
I'm just curious as to why there appear to be so many that apparently do not simply want to accept what Venter says this is on the face of it.
frankly, it's mostly just intellectual curiosity on my part, and not terribly important.
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
|
May 23, 2010 7:06 PM
Lets hope that Venter et al. are not as barking mad as Mullis.
Posted by: Owlmirror
|
May 23, 2010 7:11 PM
Mm. Revisiting your robot analogy -- what if it's a more accurate analogy to say that they created something "in-between", like a cyborg?
It might just be a semantic issue, but it still might be worth considering.
Just a thought.
Posted by: Diane G.
|
May 24, 2010 2:16 AM
M. genitalium??? I thought it was M. mycoides? What'd I miss?
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 24, 2010 4:13 AM
Levels of analysis. A population is not an organism, a cell is not a genome, an organ system is not a cell. Now, in prokaryotes the entire organism is one cell, so what's the difference? It's subtle, and maybe semantic, but in this case important for clarity IMO.
They started with a cell and finished with a cell: they did not, therefore, synthesize a cell.
They started with one type of cell, from a particular organism, inserted a slightly different genome (patterned after another, slightly different organism's), and thereby created a chimerical organism of a type that differs significantly from either organism they started with. I conclude that they have synthesized a new (type of) organism.
The difference seems crystal clear to me, and if I have not managed to explain it well, it's my fault I guess but *shrug* I'm done trying.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 24, 2010 4:29 AM
The car-making robot analogy is poor.
If a cell is a robot, then it's building other identical robots, not cars.
The genome is not a robot. And it's not a blueprint. It's more like (but not exactly) a recipe, or (to not strain the analogy too far) a set of assembly instructions.
What they have done here is to take an existing robot (itself built by an identical robot), and changed the program to a slightly different set of assembly instructions. It makes a slightly different robot that goes on to make identical copies of itself based on and including the new assembly instructions.
Have the engineers "synthesized a robot"? Emphatically no, they started with an intact robot built like all other robots, and ended with a slightly different robot built exactly the same way. No break in the chain of robot-makes-robot.
The change in assembly instructions means that it's now a new type or model of robot.
robots = cells
type/model of robot = organism
IMO
Posted by: Anri
|
May 24, 2010 8:27 AM
So, would you argue that when you were conceived, because your mother started out with a cell (egg), and only the operating instructions were altered, you're just a modified organ of your mother, not an independent person?
What happened here is to create - admittedly from someone else's plans - a robot that creates a cell. It just works from the inside, bit by bit.
At some point in that cell's existence (or it's daughter cell's existence), there will be a cell that holds no actual molecules that existed in the initial cell. Would you argue against that being created by the new genome, and therefore, by proxy, by the lab?
It seems to me that this discussion once again highlights that 'life/unlife' is not truly a binary state, but a fuzzy line. We seem to be having trouble determining if this is a 'new' cell because we don't know where the 'essence' of the cell is stored - in the genome or the cytoplasm?
In reality, of course, the cell is constantly 'new' as bits and pieces are being replaced and repaired with non-living material collected from outside of the cell. I have no idea what the 'half-life' for a cell of this type might be, but when we've gone beyond that point, I think it is entirely reasonable to say it is a new cell, one created - for the most part - by the new, artificial genome.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
|
May 24, 2010 8:53 AM
No. That's the 'organism' level of analysis.
I would argue that when my mother's egg cell was fertilized by my father's sperm cell, that it did not create a new cell, just modified an existing one.
No, mixing metaphors won't do. There is no robot. They modified an existing cell with new 'plans' and it then made more cells.
Yes, I would, and have. Cells are 'created' by cell division. Period. That's still true (so far). The new genome may be running the show, but it would have no show to run unless there was already an existent cell, 'created' in the usual way.
It's not about life and non-life or essences.
It's about 'what is a cell'?
What's-his-name is credited with synthesizing urea because he started with stuff that was not urea and made some urea from it. He's credited with synthesizing the first organic chemical because he started with chemicals that were not organic and made them into one that was.
Ventner et al. synthesized a genome: they started with stuff hat was not a complete genome and put one together.
To 'synthesize a cell' would require starting with stuff that is not a cell and making a cell from it. That was not done in this case. They already had a cell.
Yes, it's still a cell when you remove its DNA. Exhibit A: mammalian erythrocytes.
Posted by: illllllllllllli
|
May 24, 2010 10:35 AM
Obviously the real concern isn't about the violation of some supposed barrier between metaphysically vital life and synthetic life, but about the consequences of the continued privatization of genetic material of greatly increasing complexity. I don't think this is as easily dismissed as the red herrings and idiots that usually populate this blog's heroic takedowns.
Posted by: Anri
|
May 24, 2010 11:36 AM
And single cells that are, themselves, organisms? They're new organisms but not new cells?
In my defense, I didn't start the 'robot' metaphor, but point taken.
And - let me see if I understand you here - you're saying that at no point can we state that the cell has been created by the genome?
If the genome triggered/oversaw cell division, they would still be the old cell?
I agree - it's about cell identity.
And I would argue that if someone reporgrams a chamical-mixing machine to create new chemical compounds, they can be said to be synthesizing new chamical compounds.
Likewise, I would say that if someone reprograms a cell-making maching to make new, different cells, they can be said to have made a new cell.
Ventner et al. built their genome (I presume) by programming a machine how to build a new genome. By inserting this into a cell, they did the same basic thing - reprogrammed a machine (a cell) that buils new cells (that's what cells do, after all - make new cells). The fact that the first machine was metal, glass and plastic, and macroscopic, and the second was protoplasm and mircoscopic is, maybe, a distinction without a difference.
(Of course, I might be way off base here - it wouldn't be the first time...)
No argument there.
Posted by: naddyfive
|
May 24, 2010 5:00 PM
"Obviously the real concern isn't about the violation of some supposed barrier between metaphysically vital life and synthetic life, but about the consequences of the continued privatization of genetic material of greatly increasing complexity."
If that's what they meant, then why didn't they say that?
Fwiw, most scientists share concerns about "privitization" and corporate interest exerting undue influence on science. That doesn't mean the Human Genome Project was meaningless or scary because Celera, using Venter's approach, happened to "win" over the government-funded sequencing method. Would it have been "better" to let the government take its sweet time and use tax dollars on something when private backers were willing to fund Celera's project? Perhaps. But that's a separate issue; it has nothing to do with whether the sequencing of the genome itself is unethical. In the case of the synthetic bacteria, it was a university, not a private company, that sponsored the research. What most people are objecting to is the very fact that the synthesizing occured, not on whose dime it was synthesized.
(Also, Knockgoats is right about 'Sir' Nurse. I used to work at RU, and I can vouch for the fact that he's a brilliant guy who doesn't sound off if he doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm not suggesting anyone take things on his authority...just sayin'...)
Posted by: dexadog
|
May 24, 2010 7:21 PM
Since this new development is in the hands of old greybeard white males, you can be sure it will get fucked up.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlJkgtz_zen1A0BDuyAvmQ2-5KBca6PplI
|
May 25, 2010 3:13 AM
Actually, we CAN generate gods, how do you think we winded up with christianity? :) Seriously now, great post.Posted by: Kalirren
|
May 25, 2010 5:38 AM
[blockquote]One way to think about is that they are synthesizing a cell...they're just using a well-established molecular technique of using existing cellular machinery to build it in vivo.[/blockquote]
I have to agree with the people who are saying that they didn't really make a cell here. If you look at it that way, then what's novel about Venter's work? You can use a well-established molecular technique of using cellular machinery to build a bacterium in vivo by simply culturing the bacterium, no artificial genome required. Can you call a bacterium artificial just because it was cultured inside an artificial growth medium? If not, I don't see how it's valid to call the cell artificial just because the genome is artificial, either.
To claim that Venter's introduction of an artificial -genome- suffices to construct an artificial -cell- is really only valid if one presupposes that the genome contains all of the necessary information to reconstruct the rest of the cell, which I personally doubt is the case. Who knows what sort of strange impenetrable kernel of RNA chemistry goes on?
The surprising and novel thing to me is that the synthetic genome is functional. I'd expected some-sort of DNA-binding mega-state to be necessary for functional activation of genomic transcription, etc. Go science...
Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas
|
May 25, 2010 5:54 AM
That would be Sir Paul, not "Sir Nurse". A knight is always addressed as "Sir [firstname]", or "Sir [firstname] [lastname]." It is always wrong to refer to a knight as "Sir [lastname]". I wish people would get this right. /pet peeve
Hence, Dame Judi Dench can be referenced either as "Dame Judi Dench" or "Dame Judi", but it would be simply wrong to call her "Dame Dench". Ditto for Sir Paul Nurse.
I may not know anything much about synthetic bacteria, but I do know about styles and titles. :-)
Posted by: illllllllllllli
|
May 25, 2010 9:13 AM
"That's a separate issue; it has nothing to do with whether the sequencing of the genome itself is unethical. In the case of the synthetic bacteria, it was a university, not a private company, that sponsored the research. What most people are objecting to is the very fact that the synthesizing occured, not on whose dime it was synthesized."
This is the problem. While everyone rushes to beat on idiots who make outrageously stupid proclamations and fight religion after it's manifest (and incapable of being destroyed or even complicated by rational argumentation), instead of doing the real work to undermine the causes of religion, the "ethical" problems go unmentioned. "Ethical" doesn't mean that we have to worry about whether Jesus or the Pantheon concur, it means that we deal with how we treat other people.
In this case, Venter is absolutely trying to patent this lifeform. What "most people are objecting to" is irrelevant. There is very little danger, in the immediate sense, that we're going to slip into a world where experimentation which challenges merely metaphysical propositions about the nature and origin of life becomes equivalent to a dark art. Conversely, the problems of sequestering biological material under patent regimes are upon us and are the very complicated and fraught ethical questions to be dealt with, if your interested in more than pointing out how dumb a bunch of obviously dumb people are.