'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

Post by amichail » Thu, May 20, 2010, 5:36 PM UTC

Post by glymor » Thu, May 20, 2010, 5:51 PM UTC

Post by macrael » Thu, May 20, 2010, 6:04 PM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #5

Call me a luddite, genetic engineering gives me the willies.

Post by amichail » Thu, May 20, 2010, 6:06 PM UTC

raimondious wrote: post #7

amichail wrote: post #2

They just copied the genome of an existing micro-organism. Making changes to the genome to accomplish some task is much harder to do.

You say they "just copied the genome" like that's easy to do. This is a landmark because they synthesized the entire genome using nothing but the sequence stored in a computer, much more difficult than replicating a pre-existing piece of DNA.

Post by orblivion » Thu, May 20, 2010, 6:10 PM UTC

macrael wrote: post #6

orblivion wrote: post #5

Call me a luddite, genetic engineering gives me the willies.

I'm with you, but it is pretty fascinating all the same.