Creating Synthetic Life

[Diamond Cross]

Is a special on the Science Channel tonight. It is about how synthetic life was developed in the laboratory.

Creating Synthetic Life : Videos : Science Channel

 

[Jack7]

Looks interesting.

Wish I could see it. But my daughter and I have Cyberops tonight.
Maybe I can catch it in reruns.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I've set up the DVR for this. I'm curious to see what they mean by synthetic life. Curious enough even to suffer through listening to Craig Venter. I honestly cannot stand that guy.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

They mean a synthetic genome.

They synthesized a genome and put it into an existing cell in place of its existing genome. The cell then took on the characteristics encoded by the new genome and successfully replicated itself.

Definite progress, but I would say that it's being over-sold slightly.

 

[darjr]

Going to TiVo and watch.

Thanks for the heads up, I'm really interested in this.

I wonder what kind of engineering it will lead to.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Looks interesting.

Wish I could see it. But my daughter and I have Cyberops tonight.
Maybe I can catch it in reruns.

What's "Cyberops"?

 

[LightPhoenix]

Definite progress, but I would say that it's being over-sold slightly.

What's impressive of the work is the scope, but I too think it's being over-sold.

If anyone is interested in reading the paper in Science, the link (PDF) is here.

The basic science of it is that they used a yeast genome that they already knew the sequence of and recontructed the DNA sequence chemically. They started with small chunks (called cassettes) and combined them into larger pieces, eventually ending up with a full genome. It looks like the fully constructed genome got put in an "empty" yeast cell (really a cell with the DNA removed); the paper linked to above is not terribly well written, IMO.

So while technically it is synthetic, I would consider it more that they made a copy of a cell, almost like a copying machine. They didn't actually make a new life-form.

What makes this notable is that genes could be added to and subtracted from the individual cassettes, rather than having to do it with the whole genome. This makes it a little easier to work with, and allows the scope of changes to be vastly increased. Doing what they did by normal methods of gene alteration would be extremely time-consuming.

That said, the practical utility of this approach is still a long way away. If I were to guess where CJVI is going with this, they'll start making cassettes from all sorts of bacterial species, allowing pieces to be mixed and matched more easily. While it sounds very exciting, the reality is that most microbiology labs are only interested in looking at minute changes - one or two genes at a time. It's much more practical time-wise and money-wise to make the changes "in genome" rather than through this method.

A human cell application of this is even further away. It's easy to work with yeast, but magnitudes more difficult to work with mammalian cells. Still, the approach has merit, and it will be interesting to see what comes of it.

 

[Jack7]

What's "Cyberops"?

Cyber Operations.

But we got out in time for me to see much of the show anyway.
So that worked out well.

The basic science of it is that they used a yeast genome that they already knew the sequence of and reconstructed the DNA sequence chemically. They started with small chunks (called cassettes) and combined them into larger pieces, eventually ending up with a full genome. It looks like the fully constructed genome got put in an "empty" yeast cell (really a cell with the DNA removed); the paper linked to above is not terribly well written, IMO.

So while technically it is synthetic, I would consider it more that they made a copy of a cell, almost like a copying machine. They didn't actually make a new life-form.

Yeah, I knew it wouldn't be creating life at all. Scientists are always doing that stuff to hype up their work. Part of the game. For the public, and for investors. I don't blame em, but to anyone with scientific training it often makes their claims look silly and juvenile.

I knew what it was to be about and I wasn't really interested in the more sensationalized and inaccurate definitions of information process replication in chromosomal genomic substitution. That's been going on for awhile now. Nothing new about the idea.

He's selling his synthetic genome as a new technology, which it isn't in reality, though technically it is, as a methodology. It's a good business move. He'll convince a lot of people, and investors, he's done something entirely new, whereas in truth he's just invented a new engineering process.

I think LP did a good job on explaining the definition of what was really meant by synthetic, which in this case didn't really mean artificial (or implied artificial life) as much as synthesized from existing genomic information which had been process engineered.

I was interested though in the technique and methodology, and in several of the background aspects of the project. One observation I thought was brilliant was the recognition of the fact that the ocean may very well be not just filled with organisms, but may be a sea of genomes (or I believe they sued the term chromosomes). I thought that an astute observation, and a rather brilliant idea of "information fishing." It was a good paradigm shift. Of viewpoint when it comes to biotechnology, and "organic information-fishing."

I was also interested in the business aspects.

Now I'm not putting down the work. I think it has a lot of possible potential, though engineering of that degree just to achieve minor morphological change or aspect alteration is a very primitive first step indeed. And he's hardly the first to do that.

But you gotta start somewhere. And there is a huge potential database of useful genomic characteristics just waiting to be harvested from the sea life he skimmed from the ocean. No telling what he pulled outta there, though it'll probably take awhile to process it all.

one thing it gave me an idea for was the creation of a biological organism that could be injected into the human body which might feed off our waste products in the later stages of filtration (they would consume our waste) and then those same creatures would excrete biochemicals useful to us while still inside our body. We would excrete far less waste, and we'd lose a few of our new symbiotes through filtration and our own waste processes, but with the help of these new organisms they would then recycle our own waste as useful biochemicals for new applications. Biologically it would be bad waste through, recycle, useful waste reprocessed. Ideally they could also convert many of our waste toxins into proto-substances that our own immune system could use to optimize function.

I've been thinking about the waste-conversion engineered organism for awhile now, along with work and experiments I've been doing on how to engineer some epidermal cells in the human body so that they take on the characteristics of the skin of certain lizards. (I call this the Superman Project, not because it would give people super-strength, but because certain of their skin cells could dirtily absorb heat and radiant solar energy, and then convert that into biological energy, much as Superman absorbs sunlight the processes and converts it directly into physical energy. In this way humans could, depending on how effective and widespread you could make the application and how many cells you could effectively and advantageously convert, perhaps radically reduce the need for food intake. At least in certain environments. Of course if a person spent too much time in the sun then you would have to engineer the other skin cells to be more resistant to solar radiation. But overall, the intent is to make it possible for human cells to absorb energy directly from the ambient environment, rather than need to (re)create practically all biological energy through chemical processes like digestion and respiration. And naturally you wouldn't want to eliminate the process of chemical energy conversion, because chemical energy systems are more flexible and reliable than ambient absorption. In the dark and cold many lizards become sluggish. You'd only want ambient absorption as a back-up energy conversion system, not as a primary one.)

Anywho Venter made me realize that he may already possess such information, on how these things might be achieved. Through his skimming efforts.

He did some good and interesting and useful science here I think. Potentially really useful. I'm gonna keep thinking about some other ways in which it might be utilized. By the way DC, thanks again for bringing this to my attention. I'll put it in my research files to review later if I can save it as a video.

Well, I gotta hit the hay. Tomorrow is labs, and a field trip and a visit to a new library for the kids.

See ya.

 

[Tewligan]

What's "Cyberops"?

Cyber Operations.

Okay, what is "Cyber Operations"? Please don't respond with "cybernetic operations"...

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've been thinking about the waste-conversion engineered organism for awhile now, along with work and experiments I've been doing on how to engineer some epidermal cells in the human body so that they take on the characteristics of the skin of certain lizards. (I call this the Superman Project, not because it would give people super-strength, but because certain of their skin cells could dirtily absorb heat and radiant solar energy, and then convert that into biological energy, much as Superman absorbs sunlight the processes and converts it directly into physical energy. In this way humans could, depending on how effective and widespread you could make the application and how many cells you could effectively and advantageously convert, perhaps radically reduce the need for food intake. At least in certain environments. Of course if a person spent too much time in the sun then you would have to engineer the other skin cells to be more resistant to solar radiation. But overall, the intent is to make it possible for human cells to absorb energy directly from the ambient environment, rather than need to (re)create practically all biological energy through chemical processes like digestion and respiration. And naturally you wouldn't want to eliminate the process of chemical energy conversion, because chemical energy systems are more flexible and reliable than ambient absorption. In the dark and cold many lizards become sluggish. You'd only want ambient absorption as a back-up energy conversion system, not as a primary one.)

What are you talking about? Lizards don't convert solar radiation into energy, they bask in the sun to warm themselves because they're cold blooded. The chemical processes that feul life operate best inside a certain temperature range, and lizards bask to maintain that range. There's nothing about a lizard skin cell that absorbs any energy from the sun outside of heat that everything absorbs. Maybe you could play with the albedo to adjust the amount of heat captured, but that's it. People don't need to do this because we're warm blooded: we expend energy to maintain that temperature range on a constant basis.

And that's ignoring the infeasibility of using direct non-chemical reactions for energy in people to begin with. Plants are the only organism that uses sunlight in a remotely similar manner, and they use it to *gasp* do chemical work to produce *gasp* chemical energy for distribution to the rest of the plant. Sunlight doesn't reduce thier need for nutrient intake, it just allows them to take abundant, but not immediately useful, nutrients and convert them to useful ones.

Perhaps you want to make people cold blooded?