"Playing God" New life created from chemicals with a machine
Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2015 2:16 pm
Please forgive the formatting, just pulled this off facebook.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... g-god.html
I hope that link works. According to the article humans have succeded in creating a new single celled animal using a cell from a bacteria, cleaned out of genetic information, and inserting dna created with a machine using bottles of chemicals.
I'm excited, and a bit nervous for this technology. Obviously it is a long way from producing a complete cell since they had to use a scrubbed cell and added new genes. Still really neat though.
What also bothers me is that the idea that direcy gene manipulation is "playing god". Humans have used reproductive selection to modify the genetics of our domestic species for thousands of years. Bananas, silk worms, cattle, dogs... the list is very long. Why do any of you suppose there is such a tendancy towards hyperbole on this kind of direct tinkering as opposed to indirect?
I hope that link works. According to the article humans have succeded in creating a new single celled animal using a cell from a bacteria, cleaned out of genetic information, and inserting dna created with a machine using bottles of chemicals.
I'm excited, and a bit nervous for this technology. Obviously it is a long way from producing a complete cell since they had to use a scrubbed cell and added new genes. Still really neat though.
What also bothers me is that the idea that direcy gene manipulation is "playing god". Humans have used reproductive selection to modify the genetics of our domestic species for thousands of years. Bananas, silk worms, cattle, dogs... the list is very long. Why do any of you suppose there is such a tendancy towards hyperbole on this kind of direct tinkering as opposed to indirect?