[OT] It's alive: Lab to spawn new life form

[Vaxalon]

Well, the DoE is sponsoring it for energy production, it's true, but for the production of hydrogen gas, not quite as exotic as hypothesized above.

I still don't buy it.

Energy production? Pfft. Then why not use a bug that produces hydrogen in the first place? There are LOTS of those, many of which we understand very well, and which don't infect humans.

Remember, the Department of Energy are the folks who run the labs that produced our present stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

 

[Zappo]

Energy production? Pfft. Then why not use a bug that produces hydrogen in the first place?

In the article he says that he wants to "improve" the metabolic efficiency at processing hydrogen of existing life forms. That's another bit that makes me strongly suspect that he isn't really doing it from scratch. Overall, both articles are intriguing but neither is very clear on the details.

 

[D-rock]

I don't think they are making the entire thing from scratch. All living things share more genetic data than most people think. Its what geneticly works for life. It would be almost impossible not to cut and paste some sequences from some things.
Also I think the ability to form everything into a functioning life form would be extremely difficult. It just seems light years over our heads. Something like a computer program millions of times more complex than any we have now that we don't fully understand how to program in the first place, with a few bugs able to kill of the lifeform or keep it from developing at all.

Of corse I am not a expert on genetics this is just what I think with my limited knowledge on the subject.

 

[Vaxalon]

Overall, both articles are intriguing but neither is very clear on the details.

They also contradict each other.

 

[Fast Learner]

Just saw an interesting bit about this on TechTV. It definitely seems to be cut and paste, by and large, with small amounts of new material being written.

 

[LostSoul]

That is really cool! I'm very optimistic about the future.

The funding probably comes from the Dept. of Energy because one of the scientists has some connections there and found it the best way to get the money. You know, politics. I seriously doubt they plan on killing everyone with this. You crazy dystopians.

 

[Negative Zero]

sounds like the start to a few dozen bad sci-fi stories that never end well.

"... 10 years ago the scientists developed an artificial lifeform. they had all the safeguards in place ... or so they thought"



~NegZ

 

[Fast Learner]

Additional info: the hydrogen thing is a future phase. Right now they're concentrating on "creating" (manipulating) the simplest possible life form. Once that's complete, then they plan on adding in new goodies.

And yeah, it's the start of a lot of good sci-fi, too. :/

 

[green slime]

If you believe the sole interest the DoE has in this is to create more efficient hydrogen producing bugs...

Here, I have this prize for you. Don't be shy, just step up here to the microphone.

What? the small text on he base of the statue? Don't you worry about it...Well it says "Mr Gullibility of the Century".

Yeah, that's you.

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

Why should they write the entire genome from scratch? As any programmer will tell you, code reuse is the only thing that makes large projects possible. Nature supplies us with a great big huge library of existing code; there's no reason to rewrite the wheel every time.