Just because we can do something in science, that doesn’t mean we should do it. That verity should be kept in mind as we ponder the news that scientists have created an artificial bacterium using synthetic genes. From the story:
Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated. But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.
I would note that scientists have not made life out of non life. But it is a remarkable achievement, and one that needs to be very carefully controlled because of the potential havoc it could cause:
Dr Helen Wallace from Genewatch UK, an organisation that monitors developments in genetic technologies, told BBC News that synthetic bacteria could be dangerous. “If you release new organisms into the environment, you can do more harm than good,” she said. “By releasing them into areas of pollution, [with the aim of cleaning it up], you’re actually releasing a new kind of pollution.”
And indeed, a pollution that can grow exponentially.
One can see many potential benefits–and ethical perils–of this advance, including in human medicine. But for now, it seems to me the primary concern is safety and the need to protect the environment. But we had better start thinking about how to regulate the technology. The last thing we need is a synthetic life wild, wild, west.
May 21st, 2010 | 10:50 am
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May 21st, 2010 | 12:08 pm
Venter is quite the marketer.
His next step, most likely, will be to create a true synthetic organism – make life from non-life. This can be done by taking a synthetic genome (as made here) and placing it into a non-living cytoplasm. For now, it was just placed into a living cell.
For those who don’t wish to see this happen, you’ve got less than 10 years to stop him. Good luck.
Here’s the paper:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1190719
May 21st, 2010 | 1:47 pm
So, the breakthrough here was that they now can synthesize big enough strands of DNA to recreate a bacterial genome, which can be put into into a denucleated cell instead of using DNA taken from another cell, right? I’ve been wondering how quickly DNA synthesis would ramp up into being able to create genomes, as opposed to short genes and oligos. It would seem that once they figure out how to make a short genome, making a longer one would just entail running the machine for a little bit longer.
So, how soon before they can program a human genome on a computer and synthesize the DNA? What about methylization, or epigenetic imprinting? Does DNA synthesis also do imprinting? Or would that be a separate process?
Wouldn’t it be useful to establish that creating a human being from synthesized DNA would be a crime, and people will never be allowed to do it? People will always only be allowed to reproduce naturally, using their natural gametes? What would be the result of enacting a law like that, what would the landscape be like for bioethics?
May 21st, 2010 | 2:04 pm
Sounds like the prologue to a sci-fi horror novel.
May 21st, 2010 | 9:01 pm
Good questions, John Howard.
Venter is every bit as good at marketing as he is at science – if not better.
For starters, Venter (really post-docs and technicians) actually uses organisms (typically yeast) to “stitch” together his pieces of DNA. I believe they are making pieces that contain 100,000 “units” (nucleotides) of DNA. That’s quite a feat, for sure.
You are correct on the ability of a DNA synthesizer to run overnight and just make oligos and what not. For Venter’s previous experiment, he made a genome for M. genitalium (I think) that was about 385 genes – obviously not much. I predict synthesizers should be able to do this overnight in less than 20 years. Also, things could be pieced together from blunt end/complementary fragments in PCR approaches requiring overnight time frames. I don’t recall any chemistry for methylation in automated synthesizers. One of the big problems with synthesizing long pieces of DNA via automation is secondary structure. The longer that piece of DNA gets, the more it begins to “twist” up on itself and thus, you can’t add the next unit exactly where you want it and when. If you use chemical agents to limit this ‘twisting’, they often end up hindering the chemical reaction needed to add the next unit.
If you read Venter’s paper (see previous comment), you will see that he actually had a problem with the methylation issue. What he did, essentially, was to take the synthetic DNA and mix it with “chopped up” cellular extracts to deal with the methylation issue. As for imprinting, I don’t think that was an issue – but I’d have to go back and look.
As for quickly making a human genome – a LONG, LONG ways off. Venter may be working on synthesizing individual human chromosomes, who knows.
However, I think the biggest issue is what Smith correctly pointed out – they did not create life from non-life. So, the recipient cell was NOT a dead, evacuated, denucleated, etc, etc cell. It was a living cell. In fact, it was a prokaryotic organism – so there was no nucleus to deal with (M. capricolum) and the daughter cells resulted in segregation of the endogenous chromsome frm the synthetic one (if I recall) for nearly a billion generations. Oh, and it’s important to realize the genome isn’t really that novel. It’s essentially a copy of another bacteria’s genome.
May 22nd, 2010 | 8:23 am
that should be a billion “replications”, not “generations”
May 22nd, 2010 | 11:31 am
For those who don’t wish to see this happen, you’ve got less than 10 years to stop him. Good luck.
Why would you want to stop him? I mean, why is creating life from non-life something that needs to be stopped?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
May 22nd, 2010 at 11:49 am
Yes, perhaps. Depending on what was being created. As I said, just because we can do something, that doesn’t mean we should. Now is the time to regulate.
May 22nd, 2010 | 2:58 pm
If creating a human genome from inert chemicals and implanting it into the chromosomes of a primate cell ever becomes possible, what impact might it have on nedical ethics, or on the theory of human exceptionalism?
One might argue that the “final product” of such a process wouldn’t be human at all because it was “manufactured”, but that would open the door to custom-growing “manufactured people” for paying customers who need a source of matched replacement organs (as in the sci-fi movie “The Island”). Or, on the other hand, one might argue that if there’s no means of telling a “manufactured” person from a “real” one, (a variation on the “Turing test”) then there is no such thing as humanity or exceptionalism at all.
I raise these questions only because experience has shown that what is scientifically possible today often becomes scientific reality more quickly than we think it will. It may help some folks sleep better to imagine that we’ll avoid potential problems simply by prohibiting this or that kind of research, but of this you can be sure: someone, somewhere, WILL undertake it. Successfully.
I believe the state of scientific progress has made it necessary for us to take a think-tank approach, the sooner the better. Otherwise, given our generally poor record of addressing ethical questions we’re ABLE to identify, how might we be expected to deal with those we can’t even imagine?
May 23rd, 2010 | 11:22 pm
Once, an astronaut came to our school area and talked to students from mine and two other high schools. When he told us that NASA scientists had discovered traces of what could have been bacterial microbes on Mars I asked, “If that’s true, couldn’t they be harmful to us?” He said, “Would that stop you?” I didn’t say anything but in retrospect I should have said, “If it would mean releasing a new strain of bacterial illness on the whole freaking human race YES IT WOULD STOP ME!!!!!!”
May 24th, 2010 | 7:47 pm
Stop you from doing what? Bringing an alien organism back to earth? I’d agree. Studying it in a space-based lab? Probably not, if proper precautions were taken. Then again, remember “The Andromeda Strain”?
May 24th, 2010 | 10:36 pm
[...] reversing environmental damage by “capturing” carbon dioxide (though, some groups are concerned that synthetic bacteria could actually be hazardous to the environment) and developing useful [...]
June 7th, 2010 | 2:00 am
[...] we may have interbred with Neanderthals and the just announced creation of synthetic life–which I first addressed here–somehow undermine human exceptionalism, both coming out of our past and going into our [...]
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