Creating life in the lab -- am I missing something?

The BBQ Pit
1

(Not sure if this is the right forum, but anyway…)

I’m not talking about in vitro fertilization or anything that starts with living cells. This is from a story by Andrew Pollack, New York Times:

“Scientists [at the State University of New York at Stony Brook] reported on Thursday they have constructed a virus from scratch for the first time, synthesizing live polio virus from chemicals and publicly available genetic information.”

Now, the headline in my local paper (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) reads: Synthetic virus raises terror fears. The bulk of the article deals with the possibility of terrorists using this technology (with synthetic genetic material available from several companies) to create diseases they don’t have access to in natural form, or even resurrect an eradicated disease.

That’s certainly an important subject, but nowhere in the article is there any reflection on the amazing nature of the fact that in the year 2002 scientists have SYNTHESIZED LIFE FROM CHEMICALS. (I know it’s only a virus, but still.) In the long run, aren’t the implications of that far broader than concerns about terrorism?

This is one of those times when I’m really jerked another notch into the future (make that “The Future”), as something I used to read about in science fiction suddenly forces its way into reality. What puzzles me is how often reports about such events either don’t seem to see that something amazing in and of itself has happened, or else seem caught completely flat-footed by the idea. (Human cloning, for instance; there have been hundreds of science fiction stories written about the subject, going back decades, exploring all the legal and moral ramifications – yet recent news articles and editorials would make you think it was a brand-new idea.)

I guess when I was younger I unconsciously pictured The Future as being inhabited by thoughtful, scientifically-inclined, imaginative people (like my own smug self, of course). Turns out, The Future is for everybody; any schmuck gets to live there.

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But realize many people don’t consider viruses to be “alive” per se. They hijack the host’s normal metabolic processes in order to reproduce. And viruses can be crystalized.

3

Maybe this question would catch the attention of some of our resident bio- specialists in GD or GQ?

Well, since you put it in the Pit, I’ll respond to your last comment, as if it were meant provocatively.

Hey pal, the future’s nothing but schmucks…

Smug bastid.

4

I, for one, think a step or two was missed in the article, but that’s to be expected in science news released to the press. The papers inevitably mess up some details.

I think The Future is overrated anyway. OK, I’ll give you the Internet, DVDs, and creatung synthetic viruses, but there are still no flying cars, no time travel, no sex droids, no personal jet packs, and we don’t wear nifty, multicolored costumes with capes and shoulder pads.

On the other hand, we get to live past 30 without going on Carousel, we 're not hideously mutated survivors of WWIII, and we’re not currently at war with the Klingon Empire or the Borg.

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link

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The virus isn’t a living organism, it’s basically a DNA robot that hijacks other DNA to survive, as it cannot survive on itself. There is no metabolic functions, no growth, no anything but infection, hijacking, and reproduction. So it is unfair to say he made life, he even denies it in the article. But i wouldn’t be surprised if someone comes up with a self-replicating cell before i die. (it won’t be complex at all, and the line will probably die off after a few generations, but it will be alive.)

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Okay, I admit it. I want to create living cells, nurse them through an accelerated evolution, and be a Microcosmic God to a species of tiny worshipers, who will work tirelessly for me. Everybody should have a dream.

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Hey shouldn’t I get some sort of notice for being the crazy ass virologist hiding in the pit?

Anyway, several things:

The ability to make raw viral DNA out of single basepairs of DNA has been around for a few years now.
Hrrm I’m going to try to explain kinda complex (to non biogeeks) concepts in very little space…

PCR you hear about that all the time in the news, taking DNA, making more of it very quickly in the lab and telling exactly whose blood it is on the murder victim.

To run PCR you have to have small fragements of DNA called primers to basically catalize the reaction to make more DNA. Those primers are ARTIFICALLY created partial fragements of the DNA you’re trying to grow. (But they don’t have to be the whole unique sequence, they can be a small piece .0000000001% of the total genome length that 99.9999999999% of the world has EXACTLY the same).

So we can artifically make small pieces of DNA. We’re talking a few dozen base pairs (out of several billion+ in your DNA). But a virus is only a few kilobases (only about 100 times larger than a primer) in size. So it wouldn’t be too hard to either make one really long ‘primer’ (aka the viral dna) or several smaller ‘primers’ that you can splice together into a competent whole.

I actually figured this was already in use in a lot of labs in the world.

What makes a virus so easy to do this with, is that it requires no external components other than DNA to really replicate. (Ok that’s pretty much a lie).

Back to viral replication 101. Virus can only reproduce inside a cell, where it can co-opt the host cell’s DNA replication mechanism to make more copies of its DNA and also use the host’s protein making abilities to make more ‘bodies’ for its DNA to go into. Basically, if you make all of the different proteins the virus codes for, it will assemble itself.

But there are techniques that I use every day to take raw genetically modified viral DNA and inject it into cells in a form that w/o intergrating into the host’s genome it will make fresh virus.

So with the polio virus, they problably spliced together small pieces of the polio genome to make a whole virus then transfected it into cells and had it produce virus.

From the technical standpoint, it wouldn’t be particularly difficult. But it would require a LOT of testing DNA sequences to see that you made the virus right, and it would require access to a primer sysnthesis machine. The first takes time and some skilled techs and PhDs, the second requires a lot of money and a LOT of questions.

As for the whole making synthetic life from scratch.

Animal cells are many degrees more complex to make. Not only would you have to create a synthetic membrane, but also a nuclear envelope, and all of the organelles required to have the cell survive. Keep in mind trying to get a vial of lipids to form a full sized cell membrane is tricky/impossible and making the rest of the required bits of a cell would probably be harder.

What we’ll all probably see in our lifetimes will be syntheticlly ‘reprogramed’ cells. Which is what they basically do for cloning. They take a cell, remove it’s DNA and replace it with the DNA that you made/modified.

It’s still making life, but it just won’t be from scratch. There is no reason to do it from scracth when we have methods to do it using prexisting natural cells :).

Anyway, making life is no biggie, I do it all the time in the lab. Transforming bacteria, generating new types of virus… All it takes is at the most 3 days of work, a kit and some easy to follow step by step directions.

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Oh oh oh I forgit bits here.

Flyingcars: Been there done that, nobody bought them

Jet packs: Bought my the US military, never used.

Sex droids: I should go to an adult bookstore some time to see what they have.

Tacky clothes: Umm look at what some musicians wear…

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Yes, but somebody will still do it. I’ve only been in this field a few years, but long enough to know someone will try that, they are probably working out the method as we speak (type).

And our lab reguarly makes 400bp PCR reactions, and on of the other researchers does 600bp constantly as well. Our primers alone are ~25bp. We do human DNA, not sure how that differs from what you do (i’d have to read your protocals).

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Hmmmmmm, I’m not too fond of flying, so I’ll pass on the flying cars and personal jet packs. As for the sex droids, you obviously don’t receive the same sorts of catalogs that I do. And while I don’t wear shoulder pads unless forced to at gunpoint, I do wear some pretty…multicolored costumes. Capes are for wintertime only, though. We still don’t have domed, weather-controlled cities.

What I want are cheap medical miracles, like Varley’s mednanobots in Steel Beach. I want bots to take care of my diabetes, my heart condition, just about everything. I could do without the Invaders, though.

For that matter, I’d really like to live on the Earth’s Moon, as long as I can have cats as pets there.

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Link, please!

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If this is the future, where the hell’s my orgasmatron?

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adamandeve, putting www and com in the correct places. You understand that I can’t put a DIRECT link to them…

Oh, sure, the droids are primitive, and so far are mostly battery operated, and some of them are only body PARTS, but I contend that they are, indeed, sex robots.

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Experiments are being done with telepresence sex toys, and they are being pursued with a vengeance. Think on these things, as J. Krishnamurti would say:

  1. Geeks control technology.
  2. Geeks control the Internet.
  3. Geeks think about sex all of the time.
  4. Due to the fucked up way that soceity works, Geeks are often passed over for sexual relations by cro-magnon brutes and cheerleader wannabes (depending on your gender/sexual orientation)

Therefore, Geeks will create remotely-operated sex toys that work on TCP/IP networks - the Internet being one of them.

Think about it, fellow geek girls and guys - all of the important pieces are there! You can control very complicated machines with interface cards to your PC (I’ve done this), you can control these machines remotely via another PC on a LAN/WAN (I’ve done this), and lots of sex toys are relatively simple in operation (hmm).

I am really more surpised that it is taking as long as it is for them to be mass-produced and used. Think of controlling your partner’s Sybian from across the World, watching her via your private webcam as she rides it to hundreds of orgasms…and then she returns the favor. And as technology improves and increases, you get into the concept of “grope suits” - leather or latex suits wired to produce vibrations, tingles, heat, and cold at certain points, all controlled remotely via the Net.

I would think this stuff would sell like the proverbial candy-coated crack.

[sub]Just think of what happens if you’re wearing a “grope suit” and hackers break into your communications…fun, fun, silly willy![/sub]

16

Would it be a first if a thread started in The Pit got moved to either General Questions or Great Debates?

I think I will weigh in on the position that viruses are not life. There is no standard set of requirements, because in most any suggested set, there are either (1) some things universally considered to be living organisms that will fail one or more, or (2) a whole lot of things universally considered non living that meet all of them.

Tar Tarkas’s complaints were:
1) …as it cannot survive on itself.
There’s a really creepy bookcalled Parasites about how widespread and how really nasty parasites are. There are thousands of species that cannot live without ripping off some other life form. If you’re going to arge that they can live for some time outside a host, many are just like viruses - they cannot reproduce without a host.
2) There is no metabolic functions, no growth, no anything but infection, hijacking, and reproduction.
The hijacking is a metabolic process, I’d say. I’ll give you they don’t grow.

And as for easy e’s argument, viruses can be crystallized as Isaac Asimov (PhD in biochemistry) pointed out, humans can be crystalized - ever see an army unit marching?

Understand, I’m not maintaining viruses are alive, just pointing out they exist in the boundary region of what is, in truth, an arbitrary human convention. After all, Asimov’s suggested criterion, that life reduces local entorpy, is met by an air conditioner. (I’m sure that wasn’t his only test).

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I will disagree, its more of the DNA/RNA hijacking the metabolism of the host than using its own. I will just gloss over the virus using its own means to insert itself into the DNA, and hope you don’t bring it up. But you’re right in it is hard to define this. Some people classify prions as alive…
And Parasite Rex is a much better parasite book…:stuck_out_tongue:

18

OK, the headline is technically correct (if self-fullfilling) but CRorex and co., isn’t it right that to create biowarfare you might as well take a fairly infectious pathogen and splice in a bit of dormant phase gene and incredibly deadly gene from a couple of others and let it go?

Doing it from scratch adds nothign new until we can create something tailor made from scratch which is a long way off.

Plus it says ‘terror fears.’ Nothing’s forgivable after that.