A synthetic creation story

Last week's announcement of the 'chemical synthesis of a living organism' by Craig Venter and his colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute1 heads up a very long tradition. Claims such as this have been made throughout history.

That's not to cast aspersions on the new results. One can challenge the idea that Venter's bacterium stands apart from Darwinian evolution, modelled as it is on Mycoplasma mycoides. It is nonetheless an unprecedented triumph of biotechnological ingenuity.

But, set in a historical context, what the researchers have achieved is not so much a 'synthesis of life' as a semi-synthetic recreation of what we currently deem life to be. And, as with previous efforts, it should leave us questioning the adequacy of that view.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100524/full/news.2010.261.html