So it's about
God creat everything vs cell of bacteria creat everything .
how smart bacteria !!!!
I mean why not the scientists could not make the bacteria make new life in laboratoire ?
I'm betting it will happen in our lifetime. These things are dependent on technology advancing.
Researchers Create the World's First Fully Synthetic, Self-Replicating Living Cell | Popular Science
posted May 20th, 2010
The J. Craig Venter Institute announced today that it has created the world's first synthetic cell, boasting a completely synthetic chromosome produced by a machine.
"This is the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer," Venter said in a press conference.
The biological breakthrough could have myriad applications, as it essentially opens the door to engineered biology that is completely manipulated by laboratory scientists. The researchers are already planning to create a specially engineered algae designed to trap carbon dioxide and convert it to biofuel. Other applications could include medicine, environmental cleanup, and energy production.
Scientists just took a major step toward making life from scratch | The Verge
This is actually contested because the gene is synthetic, not the cell it self. We will get to that though.
March 27, 2014
"Synthetic biology has come a long way in recent years. In the last two decades alone, scientists have been able to go from synthesizing the genome of a relatively small virus, Hepatitis C, to creating what researchers refer to as the "
first synthetic cell" from a unicellular organism. Yet until recently, researchers had been incapable of constructing one of the most emblematic symbols of our own genetic makeup: the eukaryotic chromosome. Now, a team of scientists has announced that the age of the synthetic chromosome is upon us, as
a study published in
Science today reveals how the group was able to construct a yeast chromosome from scratch — an experiment that allowed the team to make fully functional "designer yeast."
Eukaryotic chromosomes belong to eukaryotes — organisms such as animals, plants, and yeast whose cells contain a membrane-bound nucleus. Although scientists have previously been able to construct viral DNA and bacterial DNA, the synthesis of a eukaryotic chromosome had not been achieved. So, when the scientists decided to construct a chromosome from scratch, they knew they had to plan it out carefully. "We didn't make a carbon copy of an existing chromosome," says Jef Boeke, a molecular biologist at New York University and co-author of the study, "but an extensively modified version designed on a computer, using a set of principles that were predicted to make happy, healthy yeast."
This careful planning is what allowed the researchers, along with 60 undergraduate students, to painstakingly string chunks of DNA together and insert them into living yeast cells. It's also what allowed them to introduce over 500 changes to the chromosome's native sequence — a process that yielded yeast cells endowed with what Boeke referred to as "unusual properties."
One of the most significant changes they introduced was the addition of a gene called "Cre". This gene is atypical because it produces a protein, also called "cre," that can scramble the synthetic chromosome's sequence when it comes in contact with estrogen — the human sex hormone. This technique is called "the scrambling approach," and it allows the researchers to rearrange the structure of the designer chromosome "on demand" within the living yeast cells, just by adding various concentrations of estrogen to the growth medium, Boeke explains. "So, just like the shuffling of a set of cards, you can delete or duplicate any subset of genes and generate a whole new set of cards — or a whole new genetic sequence."
Scientists Simulate Life By Creating First Functional ‘Plastic’ Cell: How Close Are We To Producing Artificial Life?
Jan 15, 2014 03:15 PM
Scientists are hoping to understand the origin of life better by creating artificial cells in the lab. A group of scientists from Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, has for the first time created an artificial “plastic” cell, complete with working organelles that are able to carry out chemical reactions. The
study was published in the journal
Angewandte Chemie.
An artificial cell is a man-made particle that simulates the functions of a real cell; in synthetic biology it is considered a completely synthetically made cell that captures energy, has an ability to mutate and reproduce, and contains macromolecules. Inside a real living cell, chemical reactions occur in various compartments and at different levels of complexity. The scientists were able to create lab-made organelles, which are small units or compartments within cells that have their own particular role and function. They are usually enclosed within a lipid bilayer. With working organelles, the plastic cell, which was made from polymer, was able to function more closely to a real cell.
“Competing groups are working closer to biology; making cells from fatty acids, for example,” the authors wrote, according to a
press release. “We would like to do the same in the future. Another step would be to make cells that produce their own energy supply. We are also working on ways of controlling the movement of chemicals within the cell, towards organelles. By simulating these things, we are able to better understand living cells. One day we will even be able to make something that looks very much like the real thing…”
