For 15 years, Craig Venter has chased a dream: to build a genome from scratch and use it to build synthetic life. Today seems to be able to achieve it: he created a synthetic genome and transferred successfully into a bacterium, which took off from the natural DNA. Mycoplasma mycoides has built so JCVI-syn1.0, the first bacterium is controlled by a synthetic genome.
From an article by Amelia Beltramini, focus on the 20 May 2010
The birth of the first colony of the bacterial genome entirely synthesized from laboratory machines goes back a month ago, a tiny cluster of cells blue, seemingly insignificant, but Science magazine gives the news with great fanfare only now, at 20, 20 May. Framers of the three musketeers of life artificial, Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith and Clyde Hutchison III, molecular biologists of the JCVI (J. Craig Venter Institute). Are they even that progress towards the creation of a life truly synthetic, that promise is the dawn of a Genesis man.
life designed in the laboratory
"It's the first cell of synthetic man-made and synthetic call because it is derived entirely from a synthetic chromosome, constructed with 4 bottles of 4 different chemicals, the basics of life, and a chemical synthesis, all operated by a computer that dictates the sequence of instructions, "explains Venter. "These devices now have become powerful and in the future will allow us to design what we want. We've already got a long list of applications. " Including algae capable of capturing the CO2, microbes to produce new fuels or new chemicals, speed up production of vaccines, clean water or polluted soils. Applications that Venter has already patented.
A decade of work and setbacks
The work was far from simple. Not to mention mishaps: a bad start to the proceedings (one-letter chemical) on the bacterial genome artificial 10,001,080 slowed down for a good 3 months the "creation" by forcing researchers to the arduous search for the error microbe lived, but did nothing: do not multiply and did not produce proteins. Fortunately, the basic mistake was detected and corrected and the colony came to life and now behaves like the natural bacteria copied.
market
The DNA synthetic genome of the bacterium is a slavish copy of a genome that already exists in nature, that of Mycoplasma mycoides (M. mycoides). In the first instance, researchers have bought on the market thousands of pieces of artificial genome of M. mycoides so without reducing it to a minimum of 14 genes apparently unnecessary.
However, the equipment available today are able to assemble only short strings of DNA, while the genome of M. mycoides is long over one million bases. How to overcome this obstacle? How to paste a clip to another? Researchers have resorted to nature: the yeast repair enzymes have that glue a piece to another. The researchers then placed their pieces of bacterial DNA in the yeast three times, giving to nature the task of tying a piece to another until you have the entire bacterial chromosome.
New Life to bacteria
Finally, they removed the chromosome from a natural M. capricolum and have added the M chromosome. mycoides, which has taken over as the cell wall and all its internal structures and began to use le strutture dell’M capricolum per sintetizzare le proteine dell’M mycoides e farlo moltiplicare. «Abbiamo chiaramente trasformato una cellula in un’altra» spiega Venter.
Limiti e pericoli
E le potenziali applicazioni criminali? Per ora sono impensabili: il procedimento è troppo complesso perché possa essere utilizzato per esempio da bioterroristi. La produzione di questa nuova forma di vita è costata 40 milioni di dollari e il lavoro di 20 ricercatori impegnati a tempo pieno per oltre un decennio.
«Ci sono grandi difficoltà da superare prima che l’ingegneria genetica sia in grado di ridisegnare, mescolare, inventare il genoma di un organismo dal nulla» ha detto Molecular geneticist Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff to the magazine Science. But another step towards the new artificial Genesis has been done.
THE COMMENT Cardinal Bagnasco, president of CEI
Following the announcement of the creation of the first synthetic bacterial cell, the world asks that the discovery could lead developments. There is not yet an official position of the Church, but come the first comments by the ecclesiastical authorities. The creation of artificial cell "is a further sign of great intelligence of man." He said Friday in Turin, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the CEI, before entering the Cathedral to visit the Shroud, with the pilgrims of the Diocese of Genoa. "I do not know the precise terms of the issue - said the Cardinal - I've only read the headlines this morning, but certainly if this is so this is another sign of intelligence, a gift of God to know and be able to create better better ordering of additional orders. " "On the other hand - said Bagnasco - intelligence is never without responsibility, so any form of intelligence and every acquisition that is scientific in itself should always be commensurate with the ethical dimension, which has at heart the true dignity of each person in view of creation. "
One of my reflection.
will be interesting to see if these new artificial bacteria, capable of reproduction, genetic evolution will have a similar or different than natural ones. Cardinal Bagnasco spoke as God's gift of intelligence, probably referring to rationality '(which is often used by Christians, to say that God made man in His own image and likeness, just for rationality). If this were true, even the hypothetical artificial organisms descended from these bacteria should have, sooner or later, our very rationality. And here is not so much agree.
Antonio Damasio, one of the greatest living neuroscientists, he said, in a book published in 19 lingue, che l’errore di Cartesio è stato quello di non capire che la natura ha costruito la razionalità umana, non sopra la regolazione biologica, ma a partire da questa e al suo stesso interno. E la coscienza, ad esempio, si è evoluta gradatamente tramite tre tappe fondamentali (il Proto-se, la Coscienza nucleare e la Coscienza estesa. Vedi: http://www.ildiogene.it/EncyPages/Ency=Damasio.html). Per analogia, ogni evoluzione biologica, compresa la costruzione progressiva della RAZIONALITA’, per le proprietà trascrizionali scoperte da Eric Kandel (Vedi: http://www.psicoanalisi.it/psicoanalisi/neuroscienze/articoli/neuro4.htm), si deve evolvere con le esperienze e le interazioni con l'ambiente. Questo viene confermato dal fatto che molti principi di meccanica quantistica e la stessa relatività ristretta di Einstein non vengono compresi razionalmente, ma ACCETTATI o meglio SUBITI sia per il formalismo matematico e sia per essere verificati sperimentalmente. La nostra razionalità non avendone mai fatto esperienza, infatti non li comprende in modo intuitivo. La razionalità si serve della matematica e della logica, ma non coincide con esse.
Nulla esclude che organismi che hanno avuto esperienze diverse da noi e dai nostri antenati, raggiungano una diversa razionalità capace di intuire senza sforzo anche i concetti di meccanica quantistica, se ne faranno precoce esperienza.
Tutto questo anche per confutare la presunzione di molti atei. Se the man has never had an experience of God (if any) as he would understand it with his rationality (the result of progressive developmental experiences)?
atheists, unconsciously, assume that the rationality that is so you have both fallen from the sky (like the power of the Holy Spirit), and then seek to deny the existence of God with the same rationality. Not so. We have our own human rationality based on our particular evolution, which is always conditioned by the limited experience. Of course this means that you can not prove with our rationality nonexistence of God, as they claim to do many atheists, but even his existence.
assumption that God exists, the vision of my school of thought is able to reconcile evolution and creationism, with its own theory: "God has designed the building blocks of the universe (strings) in a limited and particular, with details of the physical laws such as the non-local. This has meant that the evolution from the BIG BANG, largely by chance, had constraints. These constraints assumed that it was virtually certain that, sooner or later, one of 10 raised to 500 parallel universes (multiuniverso to 11 dimensions according to M-theory) develop a biological organism endowed with intelligence and rationality. E'superfluo emphasize that even if the M-theory (that, today, most likely) non fosse confermata, resterebbe sempre realistico il fatto che l'universo sia costituito da una serie limitata di particelle sub-atomiche, per cui il concetto complessivo della nostra teoria non cambierebbe".
Ne consegue che Dio non ha programmato le singole evoluzioni o mutazioni genetiche (ora anche l'uomo con il suo libero arbitrio le modifica); ma l'uomo era lo stesso nel progetto, veramente intelligente, di Dio. Un Dio che ci trattasse come dei burattini o come componenti di un videogioco programmato, non mi sembra tanto intelligente; e qualcuno come Craig Venter potrebbe illudersi di essersi sostituito a lui, creando una cellula artificiale. Invece anche l'azione dell'uomo nel poter creare nuove forme di organismi viventi rientra sempre nel progetto complessivo di Dio. E si superano così anche le apparenti contraddizioni tra fede cristiana e biologia (vedi: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/77264).
Alessandra
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