Craig Venter and his team has made another break through in his quest for synthesizing life. He has successfully transplanted one bacterium's genome into another and it worked; atleast 1 out of 150,000. His team, led by John Glass of the J. Craig Venter Institute, took the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides and transferred it to M. capricolum (a related parasite) via a tedious process that they still don't completely understand. The result? The cells that took the transfer appear to be completely transformed into Mycoplasma mycoides. What does this mean? It means that Venter is only weeks or months away from a synthetic life if his progress maintains its pace.
You can read more here.
Some questions:
-What does this mean for lay persons?
-What does this mean for those who are religous? Does it pose a problem to your faith?
-What benefits will come from this synthesis?
-If you have read the link on Venter, what do you think about him attempting to patent a genome?
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