A scientist recently built the first man-made genome. The little sound you hear is your DNA adjusting to that information.
Craig Venter, of Rockville, Maryland has already sequenced the human genome in 2000. Now, according to the journal Science, this one-time C and D student has reached beyond the surly bonds of earth and fought the envy of academia, designing and building, from scratch, a genome. In case the enormity of that statement went over your head like it did mine – he just created life.
I don’t know about you, but very little of my day is spent thinking such deep thoughts. Balancing my checkbook is like mapping the Amazon rainforest for me. So when it comes to actually creating genomes, I’ll just be in the back, listening to my iPod. Call me if you need me.
Some say it’s God’s double-helix job to create life. Others knew it was coming eventually. Fact is; we mess with genetics all the time. I doubt God is really that impressed with our lame efforts at trying to get his job since he’s been messing with genes for million of years. But a lot of humans are very impressed. Some are just jealous. Many are angry – as usual.
Lest we get too balled up in the religious and moral issues involved, keep this in mind: Companies like DuPont, for instance, use synthetic biology every day to make polyester for carpets, clothes and plastics. Yeah, that’s how this “deeply troubling” creation of new life gets played out in reality – on the floor, in a nice Berber that resists stains.
Let’s get genetic about the process. Down in Tennessee, scientists have tinkered with billions of nasty little E. coli bacteria genes (yeah, Mr. Gutwrench), altering how the bugs digest sugar from corn. This reconstituted E. coli gumbo gets genetically wiggy in big tanks, resulting in propane diol, a polyester used in composites, adhesives, laminates, coatings, moldings, novel aliphatic polyesters, copolyesters, solvents and antifreeze, to name a few. In you and I, E. coli results in something much more unpleasant than polyester.
Many people cite deep moral, ethical and religious issues with life altering genetic engineering. Ironically, however, those same people wear the very product of such altercation to church, come home, walk on it in their homes and then use it in one of the thousands of plastic devices they own. When genetic alteration looks like your Aunt Wilma’s bad polyester jumpsuit, it’s still scary, but in a different way.
I saw the movie, “I am Legend” with Will Smith as the last man (and his dog) on earth and I saw Charleton Heston in “The Omega Man” that spawned it. Genes gone wild is a popular scenario for more than a few recent movies. Certainly some genetically-altered bug could sneak off the grid and turn the world into a zombied petri dish, however, after meeting food poisoning up close and personal, I’m more worried about the original, unaltered E. coli bacteria in that hamburger I just ate. If we can turn E. coli into shag carpet instead of four days of intestinal hell, I’ll buy three football field’s full.
Are we playing God or just doing what God gave us the brains to do? Is it sacrilege or progress? Depends on whom you talk to.
Mention the words “stem cell research” and you could find yourself in a fight over right and wrong. But unless my science teacher lied, one of the greatest, life-saving advancements in human history – penicillin – was discovered (by mistake) when Alexander Fleming started tinkering with biology, chemistry, cells and genetics.
Organ transplants and heart bypasses, elicited similar outcries of “man playing God.” Ironically, many of those same people are alive today because of transplants and heart bypasses.
When science first postulated that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, it was considered an evil concept. People went to prison and were killed. Almost every advance in science and medicine has been greeted with some form of negative ethical or moral pronouncement from one group or another.
Flying was wrong as was space travel and putting a man on the moon. The computer and Internet upon which you are reading this sentence has been described as a tool of the devil by more than a few people – most of them in a blog on the Internet.
Personally, I don’t know how to sequence my own genome or splice a cell and I am still a little vague on the formulas for turning diarrhea bugs into antifreeze and plastic molding, but if we can genetically engineer a way to turn stupidity into cheap gas, I promise you, God will be smiling.
