Geneticist and entrepreneur Dr Craig Venter hit the headlines in May 2010 after creating the first example of synthetic life. Leila Sattary asks whether scientists are playing God and weighs up the pros and cons of this bio-revolution. IN 2001, Dr Craig Venter was the first to sequence the complete 6 billion letter human genome, his own DNA sequence, and this year he created the first synthetic life forms. For the first time, researchers were able to copy an existing bacterial genome by synthesising it to chemically create a copy. He is not merely copying life artificially, or modifying it through genetic engineering, but creating artificial life from scratch that never would have existed naturally. One thing is certain, the creation of synthetic life, announced in May 2010 in the journal Science, has aroused awe and aversion across the globe.
展开▼
