With synthetic biology, the boundarie is not between the
living and the non living but between the "darwinian" living
and the "human-made" living. Tonight, what comes to my mind
is Macbeth, that will be defeated by a man who was not born
from a woman (this is not the exact quotation but I don't
have my English version of Macbeth in Paris).
Will this living organism be less alive ? more alive ?
I am not entirely sure this is the first new life form in 5
billion years. There is probably some within the darwinian
system. What strikes me at the moment, is that scientists
are just telling us that actually we are all a serious mish
mash from different components, somehow very "synthetic" in
the true meaning of this word.
The question might be : why do we want boundaries so much ?
Annick
roger malina wrote:
> yasminers
>
> no one seems to have picked up on my previous topic\
> on the shifting boundary between living and non living
> systems
>
> until now the only forms of life on this planete are those
> that are derived via darwinian evolution for the primordial
> soup as they say
>
> in 2010 a new life form was perhaps created, the first
> in 5 billion years
>
> Updated: Oct 18, 2010
>
> http://www.optimalfunctioning.com/science/creation-first-artificial-life-form-synthetic-cell-craig-venter.html#Q&A%20on%20What%20Synthetic%20Life%20Actually%20Means
>
> A brand new living cell and the beginning of an era for artificial
> life forms! It's official, J. Craig
> Venter and his team have created the first self-replicating synthetic
> cell with a completely man-made
> set of genetic instructions—a never before existing bacteria species
> has joined the ranks of the living.
>
> http://www.optimalfunctioning.com/research/gibson-et-al-2010-creation-of-bacterial-cell-controlled-by-chemically-synthesized-genome.html
>
> The cultural implcations of this new step will no doubt take decades
> if not centuries to be integrated
> into our deep views on living systems.
>
> Roger
>
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