The 49th of 50 Genetic Ideas You Really Need to Know, the sparkling primer by Mark Henderson, is titled ‘Artificial Life.’ Craig Venter, described by Henderson as ‘the maverick who led the private effort to sequence the human genome,’ is trying to synthesize, in the laboratory, the 583,000 base DNA pairs of the chromosome of the bacterium with the smallest genome. In fact, at the time of writing Henderson writes Venter had already completed that synthesis, using, of all things (think Frankenstein!) bottled DNA. This synthetic chromosome needs to be somehow placed in the shell of a somewhat similar bacterium (Venter and others have apparently managed this step with much simpler viruses), for (Henderson) ‘scientists cannot yet reproduce the complicated cellular machinery that exists outside the nucleus.’ If Venter can conquer this final challenge, Henderson writes that ‘life will have been made out of chemicals from a bottle.’ Henderson explores the implications, good and evil, and my novelist’s ears prick up.
Let me see if I can follow progress in this field and the ethical battles that will ensue, that must ensue.