1 Comment

1. 

   Laszlo Andras on July 12, 2010 at 4:48 pm

   Hi
   It is important to view the two other clips from the BBC that are associated with this video on the BBC website
   In my opinion, the feat of Venter has been overblown. It is a tour de force demonstration that he can do such things, but I am not sure there have been any advances made.
   The most important point to remember, which is not emphasized enough is that this in NOT artificial life, since the host whose DNA was switched was already alive. Its sort of replacing the operating system of a computer with a new operating system that is a copy of the old one, but put together in a different manner. The computer will behave identically, but the computer was already there !
   It sort reminds one of me how Pierre Menard ‘re-creates” Don Quixote in the famous story by Jose Luis Borges
   The following links are useful debates of these questions
   http://www.cnet.com/8301-30976_1-20006877-10348864.html
   On this post, Jacob Needleham http://www.jacobneedleman.com/bio.htm) says
   If I were talking to Venter I would ask him if he thinks it’s misleading to say he created life. Certainly, as with cloning, we will have to wait and see what these created beings actually are like. In any case, from what i understand, what was done was to insert some chemically synthesized genes into one or another chromosomal strand. But the bacterium or microorganism is far more than its chromosomes–there is the whole organism which may determine and make possible the life of this being–the cytoplasm, mitochondria, etc. And since no single organism or species of organism can exist apart from a functional inter-relationship with other organisms and influences, one might be justified in saying one created life only if he created from scratch the whole necessary and interdependent context of living nature within which the microrganism exists and has its specific function”
   Worth thinking about…