In search of new life, new civilization, in a petri dish?

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Chibibar

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

Chaz, gonna need help understanding this one.

so basically the scientist have made a totally synthetic DNA BUT using a host cell (a blank cell?) Interesting idea, can this lead to a new way of stem cells? (I am still unclear on the whole genetic thing)

I mean if this is possible, can we essentially create any kind of synthetic cell?
 
C

Chazwozel

Chibibar said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

Chaz, gonna need help understanding this one.

so basically the scientist have made a totally synthetic DNA BUT using a host cell (a blank cell?) Interesting idea, can this lead to a new way of stem cells? (I am still unclear on the whole genetic thing)

I mean if this is possible, can we essentially create any kind of synthetic cell?
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They pretty much are doing molecular cloning, but essentially cloning out the entire damn genome of whatever bacteria they're using as a host and replacing it with these synthetically made chromosomes thus changing the species of the bacteria... This is downplaying it though, it's really a pretty big feat that his lab has accomplished.

This is possible, and no we can't create any kind of synthetic cell. Prokaryotes are a million times simpler than eukaryotic cells. It can maybe lead the way to producing synthetic cells and tissues maybe like 100 years from now? I dunno...

Craig Venter is a huge name in genetics. His genome was the one used for the Human Genome project.

---------- Post added at 03:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 PM ----------
bhamv3 said:
Someone is going to weaponize this before they actually make something beneficial, mark my words.
Click to expand...

Why the fuck would they do that when there are perfectly good things like Anthrax that are about a billion times easier and cheaper to obtain?
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

Chibibar said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

Chaz, gonna need help understanding this one.

so basically the scientist have made a totally synthetic DNA BUT using a host cell (a blank cell?) Interesting idea, can this lead to a new way of stem cells? (I am still unclear on the whole genetic thing)

I mean if this is possible, can we essentially create any kind of synthetic cell?
Click to expand...
Theoretically, yes. Any metabolic function should be able to be reproduced. Some other scientists already made a super-E.coli, Frankenstein-style. They put the different metabolic functions into one organism.

This could allow for custom-made bacteria. Industrial uses are potentially limitless. Beer, cheese, ethanol (biofuels), antibiotics, etc. all use bacteria and other microorganisms.

The DNA is not all that is needed. The host cell still has to have all the proteins/enzymes to transcribe the DNA and replicate the DNA. They're still a long way away from making a totally synthetic cell.

It's still very cool. I saw Craig Venter speak at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Boston in 2008. Brilliant dude, but he's got a huge ego.
 
S

Soliloquy

Look, we all know what's really important here, Chaz:

does this mean we'll have replicants by 2019?
 
C

Chazwozel

dr_awkward;387934][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10132762.stm

Chaz, gonna need help understanding this one.

so basically the scientist have made a totally synthetic DNA BUT using a host cell (a blank cell?) Interesting idea, can this lead to a new way of stem cells? (I am still unclear on the whole genetic thing)

I mean if this is possible, can we essentially create any kind of synthetic cell?
Click to expand...
Theoretically, yes. Any metabolic function should be able to be reproduced. Some other scientists already made a super-E.coli, Frankenstein-style. They put the different metabolic functions into one organism.

This could allow for custom-made bacteria. Industrial uses are potentially limitless. Beer, cheese, ethanol (biofuels), antibiotics, etc. are all use bacteria.

The DNA is not all that is needed. The host cell still has to have all the proteins/enzymes to transcribe the DNA and replicate the DNA. They're still a long way away from making a totally synthetic cell.

It's still very cool. I saw Craig Venter speak at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Boston in 2008. Brilliant dude, but he's got a huge ego.[/QUOTE]


I was about to mention that he's a huge piece of shit as a human being. You're much kinder than I am. Yeah, the potential for these little guys is pretty much limitless. I'd be grubbing at some patents for a plastic producing bacteria. I don't know how ethics is going to play into the patents of this shit once they start diving into things like human cell line as hosts for synthetic chromosomes.



---------- Post added at 03:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:01 PM ----------
Soliloquy said:
Look, we all know what's really important here, Chaz:

does this mean we'll have replicants by 2019?
Click to expand...
Short answer: no.
 
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drawn_inward

Chibibar;387912][QUOTE=bhamv3 said:
Someone is going to weaponize this before they actually make something beneficial, mark my words.
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hehe.. I wonder if anti-biotic would work on them ;)[/QUOTE]

Antibiotics work by blocking protein synthesis, busting open the cell, or blocking an essential pathway.

Bacteria (and fungi) make tons of antibiotics as a natural part of their defense and nutrient gathering. They were the first to conduct "chemical warfare."

I'm sure they put in or (more likely) left out a gene to prevent the cells from growing with a very specific condition or substrate present.
 
C

Chazwozel

Dr. Awkward and Chazwozel: WONDER TWIN SCIENTISTS ACTIVATE! FORM OF STEAM!
 
C

Chibibar

So basically, this is kinda like a small stepping stone to a new way of cloning cells huh? If a person can inject/replace the DNA they want I guess in the future you could "reprogram" like Gattaca? I want green eye son! done! ;)

(am I thinking too far? probably like 100 years in the future huh Chaz?)
 
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drawn_inward

Chazwozel said:
I was about to mention that he's a huge piece of shit as a human being. You're much kinder than I am. Yeah, the potential for these little guys is pretty much limitless. I'd be grubbing at some patents for a plastic producing bacteria. I don't know how ethics is going to play into the patents of this shit once they start diving into things like human cell line as hosts for synthetic chromosomes.
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Yeah, I think I read that they put their names into the genetic code. Something like that. I do know he screwed over a bunch of people on his way up. Practically his entire staff at TIGR left him at one point.

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Chazwozel said:
Dr. Awkward and Chazwozel: WONDER TWIN SCIENTISTS ACTIVATE! FORM OF STEAM!
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Form of an Illumina Sequencing Machine!
 
C

Chazwozel

Chibibar said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10150685.stm

Wow. I can totally see why patent of this tech might be a bad idea. What do y'all think?
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He's essentially trying to patent synthetic chromosomes. This topic pretty much covers entire courses dedicated to science ethics. The gist is that these are synthetically created cells and therefore are subject to patent rights like any other bacterial strain used for cloning (look at Strategene's website for more info). This differs from back in 2000, where Venter was trying to patent the human genome project. You can't patent genes. It's like saying you can patent sunlight.
 
C

Chibibar

Chazwozel;389577][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10150685.stm

Wow. I can totally see why patent of this tech might be a bad idea. What do y'all think?
Click to expand...
He's essentially trying to patent synthetic chromosomes. This topic pretty much covers entire courses dedicated to science ethics. The gist is that these are synthetically created cells and therefore are subject to patent rights like any other bacterial strain used for cloning (look at Strategene's website for more info). This differs from back in 2000, where Venter was trying to patent the human genome project. You can't patent genes. It's like saying you can patent sunlight.[/QUOTE]

ah, so if Venter succeed in patent the synthetic cell (which only the DNA portion) he essentially control the "synthetic" in the future? what if someone create a WHOLE cell (say 5 years in the future) and the whole thing is synthetic, would it intrude on the patent?
 
C

Chazwozel

Chibibar;389599][QUOTE=Chazwozel;389577][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10150685.stm

Wow. I can totally see why patent of this tech might be a bad idea. What do y'all think?
Click to expand...
He's essentially trying to patent synthetic chromosomes. This topic pretty much covers entire courses dedicated to science ethics. The gist is that these are synthetically created cells and therefore are subject to patent rights like any other bacterial strain used for cloning (look at Strategene's website for more info). This differs from back in 2000, where Venter was trying to patent the human genome project. You can't patent genes. It's like saying you can patent sunlight.[/QUOTE]

ah, so if Venter succeed in patent the synthetic cell (which only the DNA portion) he essentially control the "synthetic" in the future? what if someone create a WHOLE cell (say 5 years in the future) and the whole thing is synthetic, would it intrude on the patent?[/QUOTE]

That person would be called God, so they could do whatever the hell they pleased.
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

Chibibar said:
what if someone create a WHOLE cell (say 5 years in the future) and the whole thing is synthetic, would it intrude on the patent?
Click to expand...
Exactly what Chaz said. A bacterial cell is unbelievably complex on the molecular level. Jump up to a mammalian eukaryotic cell and you jump up to another level of intricacy. There's just tons going on. Too many reactions and too many components.

Scientists may be able to do it someday, but I highly doubt we or our children see it in their lifetimes.
 
C

Chibibar

Chazwozel said:
That person would be called God, so they could do whatever the hell they pleased.
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heh. I just read an article about atomic transistors. 200 years ago the idea of traveling into space was "godlike" or even modern medicine.

A friend of mine daughter has cancer. She just got a marrow transplant (about 2 weeks ago) and recovering nicely. That is pretty awesome modern medicine technology.

Of course, if a person/company could create a whole "being" I guess we would have to worry about stuff like "6 days later"

---------- Post added at 03:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:52 PM ----------
dr_awkward;389714][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
what if someone create a WHOLE cell (say 5 years in the future) and the whole thing is synthetic, would it intrude on the patent?
Click to expand...
Exactly what Chaz said. A bacterial cell is unbelievably complex on the molecular level. Jump up to a mammalian eukaryotic cell and you jump up to another level of intricacy. There's just tons going on. Too many reactions and too many components.

Scientists may be able to do it someday, but I highly doubt we or our children see it in their lifetimes.[/QUOTE]


Yea. I was just thinking. I don't think we'll see it in our lifetime or our children's lifetime for a full synthetic.

Would it be like Alien synthetic? (those robot with white blood)
 
C

Chazwozel

Chibibar;389715][QUOTE=Chazwozel said:
That person would be called God, so they could do whatever the hell they pleased.
Click to expand...
heh. I just read an article about atomic transistors. 200 years ago the idea of traveling into space was "godlike" or even modern medicine.

A friend of mine daughter has cancer. She just got a marrow transplant (about 2 weeks ago) and recovering nicely. That is pretty awesome modern medicine technology.

Of course, if a person/company could create a whole "being" I guess we would have to worry about stuff like "6 days later"

---------- Post added at 03:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:52 PM ----------
dr_awkward;389714][QUOTE=Chibibar said:
what if someone create a WHOLE cell (say 5 years in the future) and the whole thing is synthetic, would it intrude on the patent?
Click to expand...
Exactly what Chaz said. A bacterial cell is unbelievably complex on the molecular level. Jump up to a mammalian eukaryotic cell and you jump up to another level of intricacy. There's just tons going on. Too many reactions and too many components.

Scientists may be able to do it someday, but I highly doubt we or our children see it in their lifetimes.[/QUOTE]


Yea. I was just thinking. I don't think we'll see it in our lifetime or our children's lifetime for a full synthetic.

Would it be like Alien synthetic? (those robot with white blood)[/QUOTE]

That's cool and all, but there's a central dogma in biology that life is only created by other life, i.e. cells beget cells. If you could create an entire cell from "scratch", you're essentially creating life from nonlife and therefore God. I'm not denying that it can't happen, but it's not going to happen in 5 years.
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

I honestly don't how it's possible (at all) to make a fully synthetic mammalian (euk) cell. It just seems impossible. However, science has progressed amazingly in just that last 100 years. Who knows what will happen in another 100 or more years.
So, I can't say it can't be done.
 
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Chibibar

dr_awkward said:
I honestly don't how it's possible (at all) to make a fully synthetic mammalian (euk) cell. It just seems impossible. However, science has progressed amazingly in just that last 100 years. Who knows what will happen in another 100 or more years.
So, I can't say it can't be done.
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That is what I'm thinking. I am not as knowledgeable like Chaz but I figure as technology grows, so does medicine. Of course it will take tons of money and mass research team, but I'm sure people are trying to figure out.
 
tegid

tegid

A question for you biologists: what about creating a simpler cell than a prokaryote? Say, the minimum necessary, something that may have been their evolutive precursor. Is that more feasible? (Still not within 5 years of course, or even in our lifetimes).
 
S

Soliloquy

tegid said:
A question for you biologists: what about creating a simpler cell than a prokaryote? Say, the minimum necessary, something that may have been their evolutive precursor. Is that more feasible? (Still not within 5 years of course, or even in our lifetimes).
Click to expand...
Well, it's certainly happened before. Though, arguably, by defter hands.
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

tegid said:
A question for you biologists: what about creating a simpler cell than a prokaryote? Say, the minimum necessary, something that may have been their evolutive precursor. Is that more feasible? (Still not within 5 years of course, or even in our lifetimes).
Click to expand...
That's an interesting question. A virus can be considered the most primitive life form, but they need the machinery of other organisms to make their living. So, they're out. Chaz and I are both Microbiologists (technically), and I don't know of a more primitive form of a bacteria. There are bacteria that have been isolated from old glaciers, etc, but I haven't seen anything that states one is older than the other.

The problem is that even if you scale the cell down to only the essentials (DNA replication, cell division, and protein synth), these are each quite complex in the requirements to make them work. This seems to be the smallest genome for a bacteria, but it's a symbiont. A free-living bacteria that obtains it's nutrients from the environment is going to need more genes to survive.

So, tl;dr = not gonna happen anytime soon, but I'll do some reading and see what I come up with.
 
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