II. Life 2.0
It last happened about 3.6 billion years ago. A tint living cell emergerd from the dust of the Earth. It replicated itself, and its descendant replicated themselves,and so on ,with genetic twists and turns down through billions of generations. Today every living organism - every person , plant ,animal and germ -can trace it heritage back to that first cell. Earth's extended family is the onlykind of life we've observed , so far, in the universe.
This pantheon of living organism is about to get some newcomers-and we're not talking about creatures existing outside the earth. Scientist in the last couple of years have been trying to create novel forms of life from scratch. They've forged chemicals into synthetic DNA,the DNA into genes, genes into genomes, and built the molecular machinery of completely new ornisms in the lab- organism that are nothing like anytging nature has produced.
The people who are defying nature's monopoly on creations are a loose collection of engineers ,computer scientists,physicists and chemists who look at life quite differently than traditional biologists do. Harvard professor George Church wants to do for biology what Inteldoes for elctronics-namely, making biological parts that can be assembled into organisms, which in turn can perform any imaginable biological activity. Jay Keasling at UC Berkeley reveived $42 million from Bill Gates to create living microfactories that manufacture a powerful antimalarial agent, And then there 's Craig Venter, the famous biotech entrepreneur who made his name by the predicted time. Venter has put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into Synthetics Genomics, a start-up ,to make artificial organisms that convert sunlight into biofuel,with minimal environmental impact and zero net release of greenhouse gases. "These organisms," he says,"will replace the petrochemical industry, most food, clean energy and bioremediation"
2.Proof won't deter criticism from ouside the scientific community. The idea that only God can create life is arguably even more fundamental to Christian XVI has expressed outrage at scientists who modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God. The Pope eleborated in an address in 2006:"To take God's place, without being God, is insane arrogance,a risky and dangerous venture"
Behind much of resistance to the notion of synthetic life is the intuistion that nature (or God) created the best of possible worlds. Charles Darwin believed that the myriad designs of nature's creations are perfectly developed to do whatever they are meant to do- be it animals that see,hear,sing,sim or fly, or plants that feed on the sun's rays, giving off bright floral colors to attract pollinators. SynBio proponents are taking a new tack, and they're not afraid of the implications. As James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure ,says : " If we don't play God, who will?"
