I got the same news from this article: [Link to news.bbc.co.uk]

From what I understand, the breakthrough isn't that we created artificial life, because that's not true. We simply were able to alter its DNA, which we could basically do before. The breakthrough is being able to, for lack of a better word, compile code into a DNA sequence. That allows us to be far more capable with doing genetic work.

What this means to me is, this is the safest genetic breakthrough we have ever seen. Not only can we now build what ever bacteria we want, but we can tell it to self destruct when it's no longer needed. That's why this is safe and why I think the media is blowing this out of proportion.

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While I agree with you, I have to say that you are underplaying it a bit. We can now create new species of bacteria that have never been seen before. That is why it is called artificial life. These bacteria would never have existed.

To create a new species is to create life. They re-sequence DNA and insert it into a cell, the cell then self replicates creating a new bacterium.

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It's a bit of a stretch....

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I don't really see how it is a bit of a stretch. What is being done here is the equivalent to what happens in Darwinian evolution. It is just being done over a much shorter period of time. Instead of evolution through natural selection we have evolution through human selection.

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Yeah... I see what you're saying. Still, I'm sticking with artificial genome and not artificial life, since the latter is misleading. They took a cell, which was already alive by the way, and gave it new code. That's what happened. It was already alive. They just gave it new orders.

If you tell me to stand up or make a funny face, I'm still the same person. I'm just doing something else, because I was given an instruction. it' the same thing at the microscopic level.

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While it is correct to say that the individual cell was not created, 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."

Taken from boingboing.net article.

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Ok I agree. The cells produced by the original would technically be "artificial". However, this isn't new. We've been able to manipulate a cell's genome to replicate in strange ways, in the past.
The real news here is how we programmed the genome. Everything else has been done before. Moving DNA from from one cell to another was done years earlier in many different ways, not only by that company.

If that's what constitutes artificial life, we should have claimed that years ago. So why is saying this today misleading? The breakthrough was having a better method to manipulate the gene more directly. I think that's a massive achievement and it needs to be recognized.

People including everything else they used in the breakthrough doesn't make sense. Why not give them credit for inventing the light bulb? They used them in the process, didn't they? Did they drive to work? I guess cars were part of the process as well. What a huge breakthrough.

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I think what you are failing to understand here is that the cell that was used was Empty, it was not alive as you have stated in your previous argument. The researchers synthesized DNA and then inserted it into what was essentially a dead cell that then began to reproduce. This was not a matter of tweaking pre existing DNA within a pre existing cell.

Listen to the audio, the scientist who is speaking has read the peer reviewed paper and he agrees that they have indeed created artificial life. [Link to www.abc.net.au]

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eeeeehhh ok then.

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Another video I found at TED

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Where were we... Oh yes!!!

The aids comment is great! I hope they jump on that.

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well, this argument about whether or not its "artificial life" is kind of complex. I see where isaac is coming from in that its a manipulation of existing elements to create a new life form rather than creating everything from scratch artificially. but then that would be something else entirely.
Arguing here and there about the definition of artificial life is a little futile. we will probably never actually create cells and dna in some kind of inorganic way unless we somehow crack computer AI which will be endlessly debatable even if we do achieve it.

Its a bit like saying, I made this curry myself. yes but did you use a paste from the supermarket?, no I used all fresh ingredients, yes but did you grow them yourself? well no I bought them from the supermarket. so where does it end. maybe thats not a good analogy, I dunno

Anyway. regarding the ethical stuff, my inner science fiction geek is just thinking, Frakking awesome, bring on the future, hopefully by the time I'm in my 80's they can just grow me a new body and transplant my brain into a young attractive custom model. and then the other part of my brain says, frak that stuff about potential weapons applications is scary. but like anything we discover you cant unlearn things. we cant undiscover nuclear energy, all we can do is try to control it and hope that we dont screw something up by mistake. If I had billions of dollars I would invest some of those funds in things like stem cell research and genetic engineering because I feel like the quicker we understand these things the quicker we can take control of them and avoid mistakes, not to mention benefit from them in ways we cant even imagine.

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That's a pretty good post, I must say. I like your analogy and it makes me rethink the whole discussion, on the topic of whether it's technically "artificial life".

I wouldn't see this as an advance in bio-weapons as much as it's an advance on counter bio-weapons, which is a skill we've been very weak in until this breakthrough occurred.

Is stem cell research relevant in a world with programmed genes? I don't think so, but I'll keep an eye out for an article on that.

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now that you mention it, I saw a show a few weeks back discussing induced pluripotent stem cells where a Japanese scientist had modified the dna of adult skin cells and created working stem cells from which they cloned a living rat. At this stage though giving up on embryonic stem cell research would probably slow down the research overall and put scientists further back in finding workable treatments using stem cells due to the added complexity of engineering the adult cells. But avoiding the ethical problems of using embryos could allow better funding and less opposition from those people that believe it is unethical. Interestingly I found myself agreeing with scientists that in the case of embryonic stem cells the small cluster of cells used in stem cell research was not conscious or complete enough to constitute a human life and yet here are scientists claiming they have created life when they reproduce that same cluster of cells artificially.

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