Creating new life- ethical implications

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
I'd be curious to hear what you guys think of this.

Should we be playing with DNA to create new life?

Artificial life

DN-New

Mar 17th 2005
From The Economist print edition


A new kind of DNA

JAMES WATSON and Francis Crick earned scientific immortality by elucidating the structure of the genetic code. DNA, they showed, is a double helix formed of the base pairs of adenine and thymine (referred to as A and T for short), and of cytosine and guanine (C and G).

For some 3.5 billion years the Watson and Crick base pairs, as they are known, have been faithfully replicated by DNA polymerases, the enzymes that copy DNA. But now, for the first time since life began, a third, artificial base pair is being replicated. (RNA, which is used in various intermediate stages by many organisms, and also by viruses, substitutes another molecule, uracil for thymine, but the two are very similar.)

The unnatural molecule is 3-fluorobenzene (3FB for short), which forms a pair with itself. In Floyd Romesberg's lab at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, 3FB-3FB joins the natural base pairs of A-T and C-G. It is the first step, says Dr Romesberg, in the expansion of the genetic code.

Why there are only two base pairs is an open question, and one which evolutionary biologists and geneticists want to answer. With Dr Romesberg's modified DNA, they might get a chance to do so. Other unnatural base pairs have been made before, notably by a Japanese group led by Shigeyuki Yokoyama, now at the Genomic Sciences Centre in Saitama. But unlike those other unnatural base pairs, the Scripps researchers say 3FB can be well replicated by DNA polymerases.

However, typos do creep into the copy when the unnatural base pair is included. A mistake typically occurs once in every 1,000 base pairs that are copied, compared with around one in 10m bases of natural DNA. But Dr Romesberg is confident he can improve the copy quality. He presented his research this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, in San Diego.

One way to improve copying fidelity is to evolve polymerase enzymes better able to replicate the unnatural DNA. That is one of the projects Dr Romesberg's lab is working on. If and when these enzymes are perfected, the way will be open to make simple organisms engineered to carry the new base pair.

Since such organisms (simple yeasts or bacteria) would carry a brand-new genetic code, they would in effect be new life forms. Organisms with more than the standard two base pairs would be able to make more than the standard 20 amino acids. Thus, such organisms could make novel, unnatural proteins.

That might help evolutionary biologists answer the question of why, for billions of years, and in every form of life on earth, only two base pairs are used. It might be that the two base-pair system is the best. Or it might be a simple accident which occurred when life began.

In any case, expanding the genetic code of simple organisms could lead to radical new applications for medicine and biotechnology, and to useful information storage and retrieval systems based on DNA.
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To think you post this right as Im studying DNA replication in Introduction to Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Interesting. I didnt know another molecule could be used for DNA replication, much less a man-made (or infused) one. However why? Its not like theirs already stable DNA replication with DNA polymerase already. I guess they just want to see what the difference is.

Hope Murdoch see's this thread.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Uhm, it depends on your definition of life.

Mine is pretty loose and describes anything from single-cell organisms to humans, back to virusses and even plants.

Therefore my "respect" for "life" is rather limited. I consider speciecism the only healthy or "sane" approach, therefore my respect for life is limited to humans and loosely human-like animals (mammals, birds, etc, to some degree even fish) and I don't have much of a problem with the artificial creation of new species' -- after all it's just the more advanced version of robotics (advanced robots would fall roughly into the same category as insects etc for me, btw).

Oh, wait. This is going to be another "life is precious omfglolwtfbbq" threads, eh?
 
I agree with Ashmo in that I simply don't see anything ethically wrong with creating new life. I also am fearful that this will turn into an "omg yur a fag 4 playing god" thread.
 
I just hope that scientists find a way of solving the problem with natural DNA replication: everytime the RNA copies the DNA, fragments from both ends are lost (no, don't start any jokes about NO CARRIER or CRC errors, please) and thus the resulting NMA copy is actually shorter than the previous ones and thus the cell becomes weaker and more vulnerable to mutation (cancer) and to die unexpectedly (apoptosis). Cancer cells don't have this problem because they use thelomerase (an enzyme that allows it to recover the lost thelomeres (the little fragments that are lost)). I want to be im-fucking-mortal...and not just to wield a katana and live on a boat in France.
 
SkynetV4 said:
...and thus the resulting NMA copy is actually shorter than the previous ones and...
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He must have mentally replaced "RNA" with "NMA". Now thats an obsessed fan! :wink:

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
LOL

If it were only that easy, huh? :lol:

Since I pretty much deal with this goo everyday, I thought I throw 2 cents in.

One of the companies that I currently work for deals with HLA, HEA, genetic disease testing and equipment, and other more mundane stuff like lipo and such.

The problem I have with his idea of "perfecting" the copying process is that it's pretty much pure bunk.

A lot of things can go wrong when one is dealing with the transcriping process. Heck, take out all the potential pitfalls, such as possibility of mutations or aptosises. Just the simple act of PCR is unpredicable at best. Technically, it's the most mundane procedure right now, since the hard part is to read the test results. But anything can and do go wrong during this process.

Take a mundane, everyday, HLA test for example. We take your blood, extract DNAs from it, adds the needed polymearse and reagents and what not, throw it into the PCR machine, after that, put it into the testing equipment. We are not doing research. There is no complicated incubation procedure(in the old days, you would have to do this by hand, a la protein analysis), no mystical arts of the RNA transcriptease, no insertion, everything is top of the line and everyone is properly trained. So what do we still get? Most likely to be 95% accurate at best.

Most people in this field will probably tell you stright up (if you are on their side) - you do what you can, and you pray for the best. If a basic, mundane procedure is like so, how is he suppose to perfect this copying technique in the lab?

One way to improve copying fidelity is to evolve polymerase enzymes better able to replicate the unnatural DNA. That is one of the projects Dr Romesberg's lab is working on. If and when these enzymes are perfected, the way will be open to make simple organisms engineered to carry the new base pair.
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If and when, huh? I guess the guy knows this as well.

:D

And it looks like he will be dealing with insertion methods as well. LOL Well, all I can say to that is good luck, and I hope there is no mutant blobs yeasts in the future, or he doesn't get cancer from the after effects.
 
Malkavian said:
bobtherambler said:
fucking liberals! you're all going to hell!
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I dont remember saying that......but hey you never know :roll:
Go ahead play with genetics i dont give a rats ass anymore it going to happen anyways and it just might just make someones life better down the line.........
 
We could order a new clone of our bodies every 50 years and have out brain moved to the new body until they make bodies that don't age. :D
 
*Steals square*

Anyway, what I still don't get is why people would oppose usig DNA to help save lives and, to an extent, create it.
 
Progress just isn't the fun it used to be... I think we all should head back to our caves, or trees, and stop mumbling on these abstract problems.
Make love not clones!
Seriously, who cares? Someone's gonna do it if given the slightest chance, evolution (in a VERY broad sense) cannot be stopped with our good will. Nukes could do the trick, though.
If you had six months left to live, and a cloned organ could save your life, would you give much shit if it was ethical or not? Is medicine ethical? I think it's the same thing (not exactly), theoretically speaking.
 
No, it's not. It's a misconception caused by human arrogance, it's hard to face the fact that we are purposeless and useless.
 
I think it's important for human life to continue to exist, and thus it's existence is very important, but I don't see the importance of keeping it in it's current form.
 
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