WHAT IF...WE ENGINEER NEW LIFE FORMS?

摘要

Life arose on Earth almost as soon as the planet had cooled enough to be habitable - and as far as we know, it has never arisen again in the 4 billion years since. That long dry spell may end within the next few years, though, as researchers near the goal of making life from scratch in the lab. Already, geneticists have synthesised a bespoke genome and inserted it into a bacterium. They have also altered the genetic code of other bacteria to get them to use new, non-natural building blocks to make proteins. But all these efforts start with a living organism and merely modify it.