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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
 Posted - 06/29/2007 : 21:16:00
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First artificial life 'within months'
http://tinyurl.com/2jubwc
“It's a necessary step toward creating artificial life,” added microbiologist Fred Blattner of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
It is a Brave New World!
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2007 : 21:55:35 [Permalink]
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Pfeh. Woman already knows how.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2007 : 22:01:44 [Permalink]
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Joking aside, that is really cool!
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 13:40:42 [Permalink]
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To be able to insert complete, artificially created genomes into a bacteria, have the potential to significantly impact our environment. For example, instead of having a bacteria that digest and break down nylon, we could have bacteria that can live in ocean-salt water and digest oil-spills. Think how we could clean up after leaking oil takers and the like.
From the article: | The scientists want to create new kinds of bacterium to make new types of bugs which can be used as green fuels to replace oil and coal, digest toxic waste or absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. |
(emphasis mine)
Similar to cyanobacteria-like cells with chloroplasts in them? Sort of like... plants?
I'm getting the impression that the author of the article missed a few biology-lessons when he went to school. It sounds like he didn't really understood much of what the article was about.
None the less, HalfMooner is right. This is cool news indeed, although we're still far from actually creating artificial life "from scratch". We're merely learning how to retrofit the car with an AC unit, or transform it into a convertible or a pickup. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 14:22:32 [Permalink]
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Artificial life from scratch is a long way off, I think. What Venter has done (yet again) is apply novel thinking to a new field.
If he says he can have bacteria producing usable fuel in 5-10 years, it will probably happen.
The big prize (from this approach, from what I can see) will be a mircobe with a synthetic genome that is photosynthetic and can produce usable hydrocarbon fuel from sunlight, water, and atmospheric CO2. That is proobably a long ways off though, 15+ years. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 14:22:48 [Permalink]
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Yeah, Mab, good catch! If we could only synthesize some kind of self-duplicating collection of chemicals capable of using solar energy to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, what a wonder it would be!
But why stop there? Since we're just dreaming, just imagine throwing in the ability to make free oxygen, and even foods, as nice byproducts. Give the process a good scientific sounding name, maybe "photoautotrophy." We'd need some kind of wasteland as a venue to put these marvels to work. Hey!: How about using the deforested wastelands of Amazonia, Africa, and South-East Asia?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 15:23:02 [Permalink]
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We already have co2 absorbing things on earth. They are called plants!
This reminds my of the problems created when rabbits were introduced into Australia.
Why do some scientist think that they have ability above nature? Unintended consequences are very dangerous.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 16:01:51 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
We already have co2 absorbing things on earth. They are called plants!
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They don't CO2 into oil nearly fast enough.This reminds my of the problems created when rabbits were introduced into Australia.
Why do some scientist think that they have ability above nature? Unintended consequences are very dangerous. |
And such blanket fears should make you retreat from life, Jerome. After all, the unintended consequences of you posting to this online forum might be very dangerous. The unintended consequences of getting out of bed in the morning could very well be fatal. So might the unintended consequences of staying in bed. What's a worrier to do? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Valiant Dancer
Forum Goalie
USA
4826 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 16:41:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Artificial life from scratch is a long way off, I think. What Venter has done (yet again) is apply novel thinking to a new field.
If he says he can have bacteria producing usable fuel in 5-10 years, it will probably happen.
The big prize (from this approach, from what I can see) will be a mircobe with a synthetic genome that is photosynthetic and can produce usable hydrocarbon fuel from sunlight, water, and atmospheric CO2. That is proobably a long ways off though, 15+ years.
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Cool, although I think the Alberta oil sands will probably be the focus of this administration's efforts. |
Cthulhu/Asmodeus when you're tired of voting for the lesser of two evils
Brother Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 17:01:49 [Permalink]
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We have plenty of oil. It is still the cheapest and most logistically expedient from of energy.
Why would we attempt to upset a balance in nature without knowing what dramatic results may occur. (i.e. rabbits in Australia)
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 17:15:53 [Permalink]
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| Why would we attempt to upset a balance in nature without knowing what dramatic results may occur. (i.e. rabbits in Australia) |
Indeed, when we already are upsetting the balance and we do know the dramatic results will occur. (i.e. burning all the cheap and logistically expedient oil) |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 17:39:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
We have plenty of oil. It is still the cheapest and most logistically expedient from of energy. |
What if microbial oil winds up being cheaper and more expedient, and removes its own CO2 from the atmosphere while it's made?| Why would we attempt to upset a balance in nature without knowing what dramatic results may occur. (i.e. rabbits in Australia) |
There is no "balance" to fossil fuels, because we're using them far more quickly than nature creates them. There's a reason, after all, that they're called "fossil" fuels. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
 Posted - 06/30/2007 : 18:25:41 [Permalink]
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Dave, what if wishes were horses?---Than beggers would ride.
There is discussion in science as to whether oil is produced from dead things. We do not know if we are using them faster than they are being created.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47675
""We have determined that Titan's methane is not of biologic origin," reports Hasso Niemann of the Goddard Space Flight Center, a principal NASA investigator responsible for the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer aboard the Cassini-Huygens probe that landed on Titan Jan. 14."
If methane is not biological, than it is logical to concluded that oil may also not be biological in origin.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 19:11:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
If methane is not biological, than it is logical to concluded that oil may also not be biological in origin.
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(Has anyone told the scientists at the department of Geology?) |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 19:13:25 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
Dave, what if wishes were horses?---Than beggers would ride. |
So you won't even discuss the possibility, you just dismiss it as wishful thinking. This whole thread has been about hypotheticals, and my "what if" quesiton was no different. You'd rather run from the possibility of something being cheaper and easier than oil, apparently.Actually, no, that's not "a discussion in science," but just another creationist resource. There is no reliable evidence of long- or even mid-chain hydrocarbons being produced abiotically to make the reserves we've found.| If methane is not biological, than it is logical to concluded that oil may also not be biological in origin. |
Nobody is saying that "methane is not biological." Methane, the smallest possible hydrocarbon molecule, can be produced biotically or abiotically. We know that most of the Earth's atmospheric methane and that found in natural gas reserves was produced by anaerobic bacteria. We also know that methane can be produced by abiotic processes, but it's not happening in such huge amounts on this planet.
But none of that allows one to make the illogical leap to guess that much larger, much more complex hydrocarbons are also being produced naturally and abiotically. The evidence for that is sparse at best. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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JEROME DA GNOME
BANNED
2418 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2007 : 19:22:39 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dr. Mabuse
Originally posted by JEROME DA GNOME
If methane is not biological, than it is logical to concluded that oil may also not be biological in origin.
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(Has anyone told the scientists at the department of Geology?)
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Have the scientist at the department of geology studied Titan?
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. - Bertrand Russell |
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Man Can Almost Create Life
