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LanDroid  Senior Silver Contributor


Joined: 27 Jul 2002
Posts: 377
Gender: 
Location: Cincinnati, OH

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Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject: Synthetic life "advance" reported
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An important step has been taken in the quest to create a synthetic lifeform.
A US team reports in Science magazine how it built in the lab the entire set of genetic instructions needed to drive a bacterial cell. The group hopes eventually to use engineered genomes to make organisms that can produce clean fuels and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
...Dr Hamilton Smith, who was part of the Science study, said the team regarded its lab-made genome - a laboratory copy of the DNA used by the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium - as a step towards synthetic, rather than artificial, life.
He told BBC News: "We like to distinguish synthetic life from artificial life. With synthetic life, we're re-designing the cell chromosomes; we're not creating a whole new artificial life system."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7203186.stm
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