Category: Uncategorized

DARWIN, the great man, had assumed that interbreeding between species did not occur, and somehow the species was immutable except vertically through evolution. We now know that interbreeding between species is quite common, as exemplified by the promiscuous horizontal gene transfer of bacteria. https://lnkd.in/ec9yxqW View in LinkedIn

DARWIN'S NOTEBOOK containing the tree of life with the words "I think" scrawled beside it, that all life's species arose from a common ancestor has now been shattered with the creation of the Synthetic Kingdom. http://www.icr.org/article/darwins-withering-tree View in LinkedIn

2011 PROOF-OF-CONCEPT. "By taking advantage of major advancements in synthetic biology and cell-based manufacturing, and by introducing the exciting concept of digital-to-biological conversion, we and Novartis have produced better quality vaccines in fewer than five days." Considering that we still do not have an AIDS or Spanish flu vaccine after decades, using chicken eggs as incubators, this would be a big step forward. https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL TELEPORTATION. "My team is perfecting a way to send the digitized version of DNA code in the form of an electromagnetic wave— and then use a unique receiver at a distant location to re-create life...our future will be shaped by the ability to translate the software of life into light. The most obvious immediate application is to distribute vaccines in the event of the appearance of an influenza pandemic." J Craig Venter https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL BIOLOGY. "The future of biological research will be based to a great extent on the combination of computer science and synthetic biology." https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

LIFE FROM SCRATCH. "In years to come, it will be increasingly possible to create a wide variety of cells from computer-designed software of life in cell-free systems and or via a universal recipient cell. The eventual creation of cells from scratch will open up extraordinary new possibilities." https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC KINGDOM. "With our synthetic code we had added a new tributary to the river of life. The science of the coming century will be defined by our ability to create synthetic cells and to manipulate life." The new Synthetic Kingdom, or Synthetica is going to gradually emerge as more novel life forms are made by synthetic biologists. https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

NO DEFINITION. "There is still no agreed-upon definition of what we actually mean by that troublesome word “life,” let alone “synthetic life,” “artificial life,” or “life from scratch...we can define “synthetic life” as self-replicating biology based on a synthetic genome, a synthetic code-script." https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

MORE DETRACTORS. "President Obama’s Bioethics Commission agreed that our work, “though extraordinary in many ways,” and a proof of principle, did not amount to creating life, as we had used an existing natural host, an already-living cell." https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn

DETRACTORS. "There were also those biologists who were absolutely certain that we had not created synthetic life at all because we had used a natural recipient cell, arguing that this term should be reserved for the creation of a living thing “from scratch.” " https://lnkd.in/eyZU783 View in LinkedIn