Should Scientists Create Artificial Life Forms?

February 15, 2008

Mycoplasma genitalium is a bacterium that resides on epithelial cells inside the genital tracts of humans suffering from non-gonococcal urethritis. Up to this point, M. genitalium’s main claim to fame was that it is one of the least complex organisms known to man. But now, the humble microbe is the subject of worldwide headlines; researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute have just accomplished a scientific first by assembling a near-perfect replica of the bacterium’s 582,970 base-pair genome from its chemical components.  If Venter’s team is able to insert the synthetic genome into a living bacterium, which they hope to do sometime in 2008, in theory, at least, it should take over control of the organism’s functions, in the same way that installing and booting up a copy of a new operating system would run a computer.

The Venter Institute’s feat moves us one step closer to the day when scientists can create totally synthetic life forms that don’t exist in nature. As the New York Times explains:

"Synthetic biologists envision being able to design an organism on a computer, press the 'print' button to have the necessary DNA made and then put that DNA into a cell to produce a custom-made creature.

'What we are doing with the synthetic chromosome is going to be the design process of the future,' said J. Craig Venter, the boundary-pushing gene scientist."

The ability to create synthetic organisms could be tremendously useful, and profitable too. Scientists might be able to design a fuel-producing microbe that efficiently converts biomass into ethanol, or create custom-made cellular factories to produce ingredients for medicines. (Already, University of California scientist Jay Keasling has used synthetic biology techniques to program yeast cells to produce artemisinin, a substance used in treating malaria, more cheaply than it can be extracted from tree bark.) They even might devise tiny biological robots that could adapt to their environments with greater agility than any machine, or manmade bacteria programmed to attack and kill cancers. It’s not too hard to imagine the creation of synthetic life forms eventually turning into a trillion-dollar global industry.

On the other hand, it might be just as easy to cause incredible harm with such technology. An organism custom designed for a benign purpose might escape into the environment and mutate into a crop-ravaging pest. Worse yet, malevolent governments or terrorist organizations might eventually be able to create new types of lethal pathogens for biological warfare. Here’s an article from The New Atlantis that lays out some of the potential perils.

So what do you think? Should scientists be allowed to create synthetic life forms, or are the potential risks too scary? Express your opinion below.