Scientist Writes Software Upgrade For Cells, Still No Flash Support
Posted by Justin on May 20th, 2010
A team led Dr. Craig Venter has successfully created a synthetic organism that dictates action to living cells. This opens the doors to altering cells to produce medicines, fuels and absorb greenhouse gases.
“I think they’re going to potentially create a new industrial revolution,” he said.
“If we can really get cells to do the production that we want, they could help wean us off oil and reverse some of the damage to the environment by capturing carbon dioxide.”
Dr Venter and his colleagues are already collaborating with pharmaceutical and fuel companies to design and develop chromosomes for bacteria that would produce useful fuels and new vaccines.
There’s a predictable backlash to Venter’s efforts claiming that he doesn’t know for sure how the synthetic organisms will react in nature or that he just plain “playing God”. I’d give them more attention in this post if they didn’t read so much like hand-wringing nay sayers.
[BBC]
Twitter this
May 20th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Once when asked if he was “playing god”, Venter replied, “We're not playing.” Awesome scientist quote.