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Has man finally crossed the line of playing God?
Does the announcement of the successful synthetic creation of a living cell represent “the quintessential Pandora’s box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep,” a turning point in the history of our species and our planet in our fight against climate by 'growing' cleaner biofuels and feeding the globe’s ever expanding population? Or does it represent the point at which man finally crosses the line of playing God?
News broke last week in a paper published in Science, that controversial scientist and entrepreneur Dr J. Craig Venter and his team at the JC Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rocville, Maryland, USA has succeeded in the creation of a cell controlled by a synthetic genome. In a convergence of biotechnology and computer science, “a code generated within a digital computer is now self-replicating as the genome of a line of living cells. From the point of view of biology, a code generated by a living organism has been translated into a digital representation for replication, editing, and transmission to other cells," according to science historian, George Dyson.
The article in Science suggests that synthetic biology could help clean up the environment, save humanity from climate change, and address the food crisis.
While the computer-generated DNA was inserted into the microplasma of an “emptied” living bacterial cell, it cannot be said that there was the de novo “creation of life". A new line of cells was generated. This is new life that is self-propagating i.e. "the cells with only the synthetic genome are self-replicating and capable of logarithmic growth."
In the words of Venter himself, at a news conference introducing the paper, it represents "the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer."
Physicist Freeman Dyson, commenting on the paper, said that "the sequencing and synthesising (of) DNA give us all the tools we need to create new forms of life".
He added, "But it remains to be seen how it will serve in practice. I feel sure of only one conclusion. The ability to design and create new forms of life marks a turning point in the history of our species and our planet.”
The magnitude of the ethical, moral, security and religious implications of the development was (perhaps not deliberately) implied by Venter when he said "this is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance." This suggests that the "synthetic cell" raises new questions about the nature of life.
This is "a defining moment in the history of biology and biotechnology," said Mark Bedau, a philosopher at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and editor of Artificial Life.
The Canadian-based ETC Group, which has been monitoring developments in synthetic biology for the past five years and has pioneered civil society activism around the field, said in its reaction: "This is the quintessential 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 fallout from this alarming experiment."
The Group said that this will “stir a firestorm of controversy over the ethics of building artificial life and the implications of the largely unknown field of synthetic biology.”
It added that instead of being a one-stop shop for all our societal woes, “It is much more likely to cause a whole new set of problems that governments and society are ill-prepared to address."
ETC further claims that "synthetic biology is a high-risk, profit-driven field, building organisms out of parts that are still poorly understood. We know that lab-created life forms can escape, become biological weapons, and that their use threatens existing natural biodiversity.
"Most worrying of all, Craig Venter is handing this powerful technology to the world’s most irresponsible and environmentally damaging industry by partnering with the likes of BP and Exxon to hasten the commercialisation of synthetic life forms."
In 2006, ETC Group joined with other organisations to demand the formal, open and inclusive oversight of synthetic biology and has since called for a global halt on research pending the development of global regulations. The Group reiterated that call at a scientific meeting of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nairobi, attended by more than 100 governments.
ETC said in a statement that “the lack of global rules governing the field also concerns many governments, illustrated by the biodiversity talks in Nairobi."
Mundita Lim of the Philippines delegation to the CBD expressed her country’s concerns "about the serious potential impacts of synthetic biology on biodiversity... we believe that there should be no field release of synthetic life, cell or genome into the environment until thorough scientific assessments have been conducted in a transparent, open and participatory process involving all parties, indigenous and local communities that will all be potentially affected by these synthetic life forms with unknown consequences on biodiversity, the environment and livelihoods.
"Today’s announcement will give new urgency to the debate on synthetic biology and provides a dramatic example of the need for rigorous oversight over new technologies before their environmental or commercial release is permitted.”
There are also those who are expressing the fear that the new technology could be used to develop new biological weapons.
From Rome, it is reported that Catholic religious leaders have expressed fears that scientists are "playing God".
"It is human nature which gives its dignity to the human genome, not the inverse. The nightmare to be fought is the manipulation of life," said Bishop Domenico Mogavero, head of the legal affairs commission for the Italian Episcopal Conference, in an interview with La Stampa daily.
In South Africa, Professor Henk Huismans of the University of Pretoria’s Department of Genetics, according to a report in Die Burger, warned that people should not allow their imagination to run away with them. “New life has not suddenly been created. Life was only successfully copied.”
The start of the new synthetic cell is not a test tube, but a living cell from which the original DNA has been removed and replaced with synthetic DNA, which was copied from another cell. It has, however, important implications because “cells could be generated which were designed for the performance of specific functions," said Prof. Huismans.
“With synthetic cells, you can design cells which are functionally completely differently directed as the cells you now find in nature.”
There are ethical implications, but these are not necessarily more fundamental as when people for the first time started with the manipulation of cells, he added.
o*Professor Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya MD(cal) FIC path(Ind), Additional Professor Dept of pathology
oRupak Bhattacharya Bsc(cal)MSc(JU), Ritwik Bhattacharya B****(cal), Somayak Bhattacharya MBA 7/51 Purbapalli,Sodepur, Kol-110, Miss Upasana Bhattacharya – daughter of Prof PK Bhattacharya Dr. Avisnata Das MBBs(cal) Dalia Mukherjee BA(hons) cal Miss Oindrila Mukherjee, Mrs Chandrani Dutta BSC(Zoology)* Dr Hriday Das MD(cal) DTM&H(cal) *Dr Tarun Biswas MBBS(cal) Dept of Pathology
*Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education Research 244a AJC Bose Road kol-20 West Bengal, India
Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. There are three main kinds of artificial life named for their approaches: soft from software; hard , from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry molecules. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate biological phenomena. Artificial life has had a controversial history. John Maynard Smith[11] criticized certain artificial life work in 1994 as "fact-free science". However, the recent publication of artificial life articles in widely read world’s top impact factor and coveted science journals such as Science and Nature is evident that artificial life techniques are becoming more accepted in the mainstream-as synthetic biology, at least as a method of studying Darwin’s Chemical evolution. Synthetic and self replicating DNA or RNA is part of such an artificial life and tool for studying evolution of life in earth. Evolving such an artificial DNA in laboratory was thus for long years before attempt of research since Watson and Crick Double Helix. The artificial DNA-like molecule directed the synthesis of copies of itself and then copies of the copies, mimicking the natural process of evolution as it was first outlined by Charles Darwin. A nucleotide is a building block of DNA, or a "letter" in the genetic alphabet used to write the "book" describing our genetic inheritance. The first Synthetic Virus was done in 2002 in stony brook university New york by a team of scientist led by Eckarde wimmr (Science, 9 August 2002, p. 1016) Benner and Michael Sismour- two Graduate astudent of university of California in 2004 first made a synthetic DNA of 12 nucleotides of a virus but it could not however copied itself. In 2010, The first synthetic and self replicating DNA /cell as a bacterium has been claimed by Professor Dr C J Venter of J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California, [ He was best known for his work with the Human Genome Project] is successful and same is published in journal the science [1]. The cell is claimed totally derived from a synthetic chromosome [They bought it from a company more than 1000 -1080-base sequences that covered the whole M. mycoides genome], made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information and using genetic code created by a super computer. The Venter’s team [20 members team] synthesized the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA at cost of $40 million research. Venter's team said they worked with a synthetic version of the DNA from a small bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides which was transplanted into another bacterium called Mycoplasma capricolum, which had most of its insides DNA removed. The new microbe came to life and began replicating in the lab dish. Specifically, the team showed that the artificially created DNA-like molecule containing six gene-building nucleotides - instead of the four found in natural DNA - could support the molecular "photocopying" operation known as polymerase chain reaction. The genome Dr. Venter synthesized is copied from a natural bacterium that infects goats. 580,000 DNA units in length, of a small bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium. His goal however was to make cells that might take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and produce methaneose .”
Replacing the genome of any bacterial cell with one from another species by transplanting a whole genome as naked DNA is however a long known method as gene cloning[3] / and or gene transfer mechanism called genome transplant. Gene cloning will result a new species[2] De novo synthesis of a self replicating bacterial or human DNA is here an increasingly valuable resource for a broad research and future application. Synthesis of Gene /DNA is also not new but an old concept. Synthesis of gene length (1-3Kb) DNA is however very common[5]. The Process of Synthetic DNA construction involves the assembly of Overlapping Oligonucleotides into contiguous fragments of dsDNA using PCR based and or ligation based methods[4 ,5] or by Pair wise Selection assembly(PSA) methods for large scale long length ...