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'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

news.bbc.co.uk

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Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#81

Post by Devilboy »

bh42 wrote: post #16
orblivion wrote: post #5

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

Luddite. In all seriousness, the dangers brought up in the article can only come from a person lacking significant knowledge of bacteria. Unimaginable numbers of bacteria permeate every part of the world, including miles within the earth, deep sea volcanic vents, radioactive waste, the rain drops falling on our heads, and us, up our noses, in our skin pores, our guts, etc. Those simple bacteria evolve at staggering r…

Life on earth has been trying to turn the planet into grey goo for billions of years already. I think we'll be OK.

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#82

Post by jamesbritt »

nooneelse wrote: post #71
jamesbritt wrote: post #69

Gripe: "artificial life" already has a somewhat lengthy history of usage, referring to emulating biological activity or traits in software or hardware. It's often shortened to just alife or a-life. It's related to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and the like. It would be nice if the using-real-chemicals-and-alive-stuff hacking were called "synthetic life", or something to distinguish it from existing termino…

That use maybe should have been "simulated life" all along, so as to be more exact. This is a living organism that is artificially made, "artificial life" applies to it just as much as the other subject. Though the more specific terms that capture the way in which their somethings are artificial are good too.

'This is a living organism that is artificially made, "artificial life" applies to it just as much as the other subject.'

Maybe. But if you end up with a living organism, then that it's not artificial life; it's life (albeit artificially manufactured) . Whereas the software stuff is never anything but artificial.

Long run I'd expect anything that's alive to be called life, regardless of the process that lead to it.

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#83

Post by Devilboy »

geebee wrote: post #34
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're probably getting negged because you appear to be disparaging the accomplishment. But yeah, they did copy over an existing dna structure, they didn't create one from scratch. However, the scientists did (according to the arstechnica article, posted above) have to remove a section of the DNA (something to do with the bacterium cutting DNA originating in yeast into small pieces... sigh, wish I understood this sor…

Some people won't be happy unless they make their OWN protons, neutrons and electrons instead of using existing ones in their artificial life.

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#84

Post by plesn »

phaedrus wrote: post #47

This is surprisingly like the first step you'd take if you were about to start hacking the firmware on an embedded board: before you change bits, you upload a known good firmware to prove your programming process is working correctly.

It's more like a compiler: bootstrapping is not complete yet though, the bacteria produced should be able to produce the rest of the entire cell.

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#85

Post by zackattack »

Devilboy wrote: post #80
Evgeny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess sooner or later the random mutations may make these string "corrupted".

I hope they included checkbits!

it may be a misconception but i think that checkbits are a feature of organic dna?

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#86

Post by amalcon »

jamesbritt wrote: post #69

Gripe: "artificial life" already has a somewhat lengthy history of usage, referring to emulating biological activity or traits in software or hardware. It's often shortened to just alife or a-life. It's related to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and the like. It would be nice if the using-real-chemicals-and-alive-stuff hacking were called "synthetic life", or something to distinguish it from existing termino…

Are we sure that the CS term predates the biological term? I mean, we might not have really succeeded in creating (biological) artificial life in the 1950's, but someone was almost certainly trying.

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#87

Post by ars »

bh42 wrote: post #52
WilliamLP wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And unless you believe in magic it is unlikely to out-compete in a pre-existing niche. Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. Not being constrained by needing to have come from slow gradual iteration might open some possibilities, some terrifying. Biology doesn't produce the wheel. To consider this as a possibility is not to believe in magic.

Cars are faster than land animals. Planes are faster than birds. Fuel, jet fuel. Biology doesn't produce the wheel. Tumble weeds? Insects which curl up into a wheel to quickly roll away from danger? Can a car drive up stairs? Indeed if we genetically engineered a large animal to run on gasoline AND provided it with an ample supply of gasoline, it would move faster than anything else... as long as it had gasoline. If…

> Indeed if we genetically engineered a large animal to run on gasoline AND provided it with an ample supply of gasoline, it would move faster than anything else... as long as it had gasoline.

Do you think gasoline is magic? Gasoline has almost exactly the same energy content as fat. Tons of animals have access to fat.

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#88

Post by aheilbut »

jamesbritt wrote: post #69

Gripe: "artificial life" already has a somewhat lengthy history of usage, referring to emulating biological activity or traits in software or hardware. It's often shortened to just alife or a-life. It's related to genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and the like. It would be nice if the using-real-chemicals-and-alive-stuff hacking were called "synthetic life", or something to distinguish it from existing termino…

The field actually does typically call itself "synthetic biology," rather than "artificial life".

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#89

Post by dublinclontarf »

Anon84 wrote: post #27
itistoday wrote: post #20

Oddly enough this makes me feel a bit impotent. Here I am playing with my 1's and 0's... like a caveman. :-p

You're using base 2 (0 and 1), they are using base 4 (A, G, C and T)... Not that different, really.

Could this mean a step towards biological computers?

Re: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists

#90

Post by tocomment »

Here are my questions about this, hope you smart folks don't mind chiming in:

How do you physically put DNA into a cell? A very small needle? Or is there something fancier?

How were the synthesized pieces of DNA produced? Very tiny robotic hands pushing the molecules together in the right sequence?

How did they stitch together the synthesized pieces of DNA? What would say which pieces go with which?

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