Reporters' Roundtable: What is artificial life? (podcast) - CNET

▤ Summary

Last month, of course, Craig Venter announced that he had modified a living organism by replacing its DNA with a synthetically-created genome. The J. Craig Venter Institute project took Mycoplasma capricolum bacteria and completely rewrote its genetic code of more than 1 million base pairs of DNA. Its important science and it raises fascinating technological and ethical questions, some of which well be discussing today. Whats the philosophical difference between creating "artificial life" in the lab and crossbreeding corn for pest resistance? But the bacterium or microorganism is far more than its chromosomes--there is the whole organism which may determine and make possible the life of this being--the cytoplasm, mitochondria, etc.

▦ Linked Companies