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Randy
SFN Regular
USA
1990 Posts |
 Posted - 11/14/2003 : 15:42:43
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Just came across this webposted story on a breakthru experiment...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/2003-11-13-new-life-usat_x.htm
Posted 11/13/2003 10:22 PM
Scientists create a virus that reproduces
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
It is the stuff of science fiction and bioethical debates: The creation of artificial life. Up until now, it's largely been just that.
But an important technical bridge towards the creation of such life was crossed Thursday when genomics pioneer Craig Venter announced that his research group created an artificial virus based on a real one in just two weeks' time.
When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself.
Venter cautioned that the creation of artificial human or animal life is a long way off because the synthetic bacteriophage — the virus that was created — is a much simpler life form. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria.
The project was funded in part by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that would capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, produce hydrogen or clean the environment.
But the questions ethicists have raised about such work are numerous: Should we be playing God? Does the potential for good that new life forms may have outweigh the harm they could do?
Arthur Caplan, who heads the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, says yes. This technology "is impressive. It's powerful and it should be treated with humility and caution," Caplan says, "But we should do it."
A genome is made up of DNA "letters," or base pairs, that combine to "spell" an individual's chromosomes. The human genome project was completed in April.
This summer, researchers at Venter's Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives bought commercially available strands of DNA and, using a new technology, coaxed them together to form a duplicate of the genome of a bacteriophage called phi X.
"It's a very important technical advance," says Gerald Rubin, a molecular geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "You can envision the day when one could sit down at a computer, design a genome and then build it. We're still inventing the tools to make that happen, and this is an important one."
Venter notes the synthetic bacteriophage has 5,000 base pairs in its genome. The human genome has 3 billion, so similar work in human form probably won't happen in this decade, he says.
To date, the largest genome that was synthesized was the 7,500-base-pair polio virus. But that was only semi-functional and took three years to complete.
The researchers chose to put the new technology into the public domain for all scientists to use. It will appear in the next few weeks on the Web site of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The technology raises safety issues, says David Magnus of Stanford's Center for Biomedical Ethics. Even putting it in the public domain is "a double-edged sword," he says. That presumes that allowing everyone access will keep the good guys ahead of the bad guys. "It's a gamble. ... It's a bet that everyone has a stake in," he says.
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"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."
"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson |
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Vegeta
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
 Posted - 11/14/2003 : 19:06:01 [Permalink]
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Are viruses considered 'alive'?
Also have they created a new virus? Or created an existing virus artificially? |
What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a pink shirt before?
"I was asked if I would do a similar sketch but focusing on the shortcomings of Islam rather than Christianity. I said, 'No, no I wouldn't. I may be an atheist but I'm not stupid.'" - Steward Lee |
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LordofEntropy
Skeptic Friend
USA
85 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2003 : 21:39:51 [Permalink]
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Playing around with viruses, bacteriaphages in particular has brought many good things(e.g. insulin for diabetics). However the potential for disaster is great. Since phages inject their DNA into cells, which then is duplicated by the cell in mitosis, imagine a virus that picks up a cancer gene and then starts putting it into cells.
A virus that can reproduce is particularly scary, since this circumvents one of the main evolutionary defenses against viruses; viruses have to infect cells in order to get their DNA replicated. Bacteria naturally produce restriction enzymes to chop up a good amount of foreign DNA acquired by transduction from phages.
Also if a virus is reproducing on its own, I'm not sure it is a virus anymore. |
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
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LordofEntropy
Skeptic Friend
USA
85 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2003 : 21:43:32 [Permalink]
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| To answer your question Vegeta, viruses aren't considered "alive". This is because they do not reproduce, have metabolic processes, or exhibit irritibility. |
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/14/2003 : 21:47:42 [Permalink]
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Whether or not viruses are 'alive' is a damn good question. Many people consider life to be that which can reproduce itself. Viruses cannot do so; instead they usurp cells which have the right "machinery" to reproduce for them (to anthropomorphize heavily).
Of course, if you go strictly by that definition, then human beings aren't "alive" since human beings can't really reproduce on their own, either. Typically, it takes two humans to make a third. But, then again, no matter how many viruses you throw into a test tube, if there are only viruses in there, they won't reproduce.
I don't believe that the question of viruses being "alive" is one that is settled, even among professional biologists. But, if you look at the "tree of life," and ask which Kingdom viruses are a part of, I believe you'll notice that they are entirely missing.
As to your second question, Vegeta, the second sentence in the article answers it:quote:
But an important technical bridge towards the creation of such life was crossed Thursday when genomics pioneer Craig Venter announced that his research group created an artificial virus based on a real one in just two weeks' time.
(Emphasis mine.)
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- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/15/2003 : 04:20:27 [Permalink]
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Ya beat me to it, Randy! I was going to post this one and found it already here.  Ah well.
Some time this weekend, I'm going to drop in on Tweb and see what the reaction is on 'the other side'. Might be interesting, especally if Sarfati's got hold of it.
It needs to be remembered that this is not abiogenesis. However, I think it might give some insite on some of the mechanisms of it. Looking forward to more.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Computer Org
Skeptic Friend
392 Posts |
Posted - 11/15/2003 : 08:11:46 [Permalink]
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Ye güds!! Can it get much worse than this?
On computers they're called "kiddie crackers". They know very little but can find all kinds of destructive programs, download them from the Web and use them in cracker-attacks. Once the technology is evolved and published, (no matter the research field is), huge vulnerability for misuse exists --- by those who know little but can follow a recipie.
A few weeks ago I read an article in Science News detailing some new technique availble to modify viral DNA/RNA. At the time I read it, I was aghast at the potential for disaster, but this one raises the ante by a pot-full.
Entropy is dead (pun intended) right when he writes:quote:
Playing around with viruses, bacteriaphages in particular has brought many good things(e.g. insulin for diabetics). However the potential for disaster is great. Since phages inject their DNA into cells, which then is duplicated by the cell in mitosis, imagine a virus that picks up a cancer gene and then starts putting it into cells.
A virus that can reproduce is particularly scary, since this circumvents one of the main evolutionary defenses against viruses; viruses have to infect cells in order to get their DNA replicated. Bacteria naturally produce restriction enzymes to chop up a good amount of foreign DNA acquired by transduction from phages.
Very, very, very bad, IMO. |
Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life. --Falstaff |
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Vegeta
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
Posted - 11/19/2003 : 19:54:56 [Permalink]
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| IMO as long as they do these experiments with the necessary precautions they should go ahead. You can't stand in the way of progress. |
What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a pink shirt before?
"I was asked if I would do a similar sketch but focusing on the shortcomings of Islam rather than Christianity. I said, 'No, no I wouldn't. I may be an atheist but I'm not stupid.'" - Steward Lee |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 11/19/2003 : 20:30:10 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Computer Org
Entropy is dead (pun intended) right when he writes:quote:
A virus that can reproduce is particularly scary, since this circumvents one of the main evolutionary defenses against viruses; viruses have to infect cells in order to get their DNA replicated. Bacteria naturally produce restriction enzymes to chop up a good amount of foreign DNA acquired by transduction from phages.
Very, very, very bad, IMO.
The article read:
quote:
When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself. [emphasis added]
I think there has been some confusion here. Viruses don't reproduce themselves. Just "creating" a virus from scratch is a break through indeed. But a virus needs metabolism in order the reproduce without a host cell. Since nature has not come up with such a thing yet I have a hard time believing scientists has. There must be some kind misunderstanding on the journalist side, thinking a virus could self-reproduce.
Edited for emphasis. |
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Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
| Edited by - Dr. Mabuse on 11/20/2003 08:32:20 |
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furshur
SFN Regular
USA
1536 Posts |
Posted - 11/20/2003 : 06:41:36 [Permalink]
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quote:
The article read:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When researchers created a synthetic genome (genetic map) of the virus and implanted it into a cell, the virus became "biologically active," meaning it went to work reproducing itself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think there has been some confusion here. Viruses don't reproduce themselves. Just "creating" a virus from scratch is a break through indeed. But a virus needs metabolism in order the reproduce without a host cell. Since nature has not come up with such a thing yet I have a hard time believing scientists has. There must be some kind misunderstanding on the journalist side, thinking a virus could self-reproduce.
The biggest problem with this article is that it was in USA today. The reporter probably did not have a clue what he was being told and did his best to write it up in the paper.
My guess is that the implanted RNA reproduced like all other viruses and used the cells DNA to reproduce itself.
This is my laymans questions of the story.
The story states that the researchers created a synthetic genome. They obviously did not build the genome atom by atom so I assume that they used some building blocks, ie recombined RNA. Does that mean that they simply injected some recombined RNA into the cell and it took over the function of the cell to reproduce more of the RNA? That would be like a virus but not actually a virus. A virus is generally some RNA wrapped in a protien shell. An actual virus when it encounters a host cell 'injects' its own RNA into the cell. This sounds like they had to inject the RNA into the cell so, this is interesting but hardly the huge breakthrough that USA Today thinks it is. I could be wrong on this but that is what it sounds like to me. |
If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know. |
| Edited by - furshur on 11/20/2003 06:42:32 |
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