[Newsbot]

Title: 'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists
Category: Science
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2010-05-22 22:58:29

[GreenTiger]

Among other things Dr Frankenstein would be proud.

[ShepherdsDog]

I think it was on an episode of sliders that one reality created a bacteria to combat oil spills. it went nuts and consumed all oil and all of it's by products, including synthetics.

[Khar]

A lot of overstatements from everyone in that article, it seems. While this is an excellent step what was said later in the article was truthful -- there's been methods of genetic engineering for decades now which are mature and do produce the results which we want, and those processes are quite easy to use as well as being incredibly cheap. I myself have had fun making bacteria cells produce compounds, it's actually something which was introduced to all first year sciences students when I started.

While it's a landmark I think the reason the media's overall coverage is fairly lacklustre. I remember quite a few years back my Mother laughing when CBC reported breaking news from an American lab, saying that the same processes had been used and were discarded in Canadian labs for a more modern, improved setup.

Right now,I have to wonder about the amount of labour, the degree of use and the level of understanding we have of this technology and in it's creation. We have mapped genomes but that doesn't mean we understand them. Getting something to replicate and multiply is one of the simplest things you can make a cell do -- this feels a long way away from doing more (or even competing at the level as) modern genetic engineering practices.

Definitely worth the article in nature. Still skeptical about the breadth of the discovery some are citing.