The Journal Science Interviews J. Craig Venter About the first "Synthetic Cell"

A paper published in the journal Science describes a remarkable rebooting of a bacterial cell with a million-letter package of biological "software" created from scratch in a computer and then synthesized in a laboratory. This Skype interview was provided to the media by the journal, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. More at http://www.sciencemag.org and on DOT EARTH
http://j.mp/SynthBIO

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• energy
• technology
• research
• science
• biology
• genomics
• genetics
• bacteria
• venter

[narutokage777]

A question to Craig Venter: Did you shout, "It's aliiiive!" and laughed maniacally afterwards?

[cycophile]

@TheRogueMonk This technology is only getting started.

[TheRogueMonk]

can someone explain to me .. he makes a chromozone that is added to an already existing cell?

so he didnt make life entirely out of syntehtic things ?

he is still not god

[bhartman36]

@HolyRevelation

I *did* look up entropy before I answered. I also looked up the second law of thermodynamics. This page explains the error you're making.

2ndlaw.oxy.edu/evolution.html

Again, entropy is about energy, not about things falling apart. If things fell apart in nature, water molecules would never form. Hell, *hydrogen* would never form.

[HolyRevelation]

@bhartman36 You're confusing Over-unity with Entropy, overunity prevents you from getting more energy out of a machine than you put into it.

Entropy is about the degradation of "MATTER" and energy over time, MATTER and energy are running down, they are becoming disordered, NOT ordered.

That's the mistake you're making, go look up entropy and over-unity in the dictionary.

[bhartman36]

@HolyRevelation

Venter used chemistry to do it. Chemistry is a natural process.

Entropy is about energy, not about order. That's the mistake you're making. The second law of thermodynamics prevents you from getting more energy out of a machine than you put into it, but it doesn't mean everything falls apart. It just means energy is needed for reactions to happen. Venter and his team didn't put a bunch of chemicals in a vial and magically form life. He had enzymes and an energy source.

[HolyRevelation]

@bhartman36 Craig Venter did not use natural processes to create life from non-life, amino acids organizing themselves into living Cells would violate the second law of thermodynamics.

In the natural world, over time things brake down, they do not get better, ie Entropy.

Entropy: The degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity.

A process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.

[bhartman36]

@HolyRevelation

Craig Venter has proven that intelligent beings *can* create life, not that an intelligent being *did* create life. Further, Venter's process is chemical, and the chemicals already existed. He didn't use magic or prayer.

[HolyRevelation]

Craig has proven that life requires an intelligent designer, that amino acids alone can never organize themselves a living Cell.

Amino acids alone don't create much of anything, intelligent designers alone do and are solely responsible for everything that has ever been created.

[logicCplusplus]

@atheistkyo

Craig Venter, whether he believes it or not, shows that it takes INTELLIGENT DESIGN to create life.

Secondly, Craig Venter never created life from scratch. They took existing life and modified it.