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Imagine a world in which organisms exchange genes amongst themselves, like the first inhabitants of the Earth used to almost 4 billion years ago. Eduard Punset tackles synthetic biology and bioengineering with the aid of the Nobel Prize winner, Hamilton Smith, Molecular Biologist and close collaborator with Craig Venter, one of the gurus from the era of discoveries on the genome.

On 24th January 2008, science published on its website an article that marked a division in the field of synthetic biology: a team at the Craig Venter Institute, led by Hamilton Smith, had succeeded in creating the complete genome of a bacteria, stringing together its chemical components. It was, according to Craig Venter, the second step in the three necessary to create synthetic life (the third is integrating that artificial genome into a bacteria and making it function).

As Chris Voigt, a Synthetic Biologist at the University of California has been quoted by Wired as saying, “At the Craig Venter Institute you’ll soon be able to take a file from the computer and, through chemical synthesis, transform this information into life”. It shouldn’t therefore appear to us to be that preposterous when we hear top-notch scientists such as Venter himself and others imagining a not-very-distant future where children will be playing with genes in their living room, editing them on their computer just as they edit images today in Photoshop.

Although obviously, the entertainment of children of the future is not the ultimate objective of this scientific-technological development. The creation and design of artificial life will have much broader applications according to explanations given in the interview by Hamilton Smith to Punset: “To manufacture pharmaceutical products, or organic chemical products, or biofuel, etc.”

To find out more:

* ‘Researchers Take Step Toward Synthetic Life‘, news article in the New York Times about the creation of the first synthetic genome of a bacteria by the Craig Venter Institute.
* ‘Researchers Say They Created a ‘Synthetic Cell’‘, news article in the New York Times about Craig Venter synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.
* ‘LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!‘, transcription of the discussion at Edge.org amongst various scientists on their ideas on life in which, amongst other topics, they examine synthetic biology.
* ‘Synthetic Biology, Life 2.0′, article in The Economist (paying and non-paying version).
* The Craig Venter Institute website.