Venter Institute Creates Synthetic Life
This is not tech, but it’s certainly geek.
From Agence France-Presse via Raw Story, something Victor Frankenstein dreamed of, which dream ultimately destroyed him–fictionally speaking, of course, since Victor Frankenstein was a character in a novel.
This is not in a novel.
It’s just one cell, but it is the first artificially-created living cell.
US researchers have developed the first bacteria cell controlled by a synthetic genome, in a breakthrough which may pose philosophical and scientific questions about the bid to recreate life.
“This is the first synthetic cell that’s been made,” said lead researcher Craig Venter, as the discovery was unveiled.
“We call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer.”
Here is a link to the article at the J. Craig Venter Institute website. Here is one to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation story on the same subject.
I don’t know what my reaction to this is.
But it is certainly news, possibly more significant than any other news of the day.