Why Craig Venter Isn't Actually God
28/05/10 12:50 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Fri, 05/28/2010 - 18:21.
The achievement of Dr. Craig Venter and his team to express a chemical synthesized and modified genome in a bacterium is monumental, even if it is incremental. I viewed his 30 minute interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, and he was entirely frank and reasonable about the accomplishment and its implications. As he pointed out, the synthesis and incorporation of the artificial genome was primarily a proof of concept achievement. I suspect it will take some time before a commercially viable, practical outcome will result from this technology. Even though the evolution of cells appears to have resulted from random mutations in genomes over billions of years, there is tremendous wastage and inefficiency in cellular operations as we learn more about them. This does provide the opportunity to improve on nature with rational design. As we understand more about the architecture of cell communications, I see great opportunities for the reconstruction of optimized eukaryotic-like protein kinase-based signalling systems in bacteria. Such genetically-engineered bacteria could become the basic components for the generation of nanoprocessors to drive our computers in the not so far future.
Link to the original blog post
The achievement of Dr. Craig Venter and his team to express a chemical synthesized and modified genome in a bacterium is monumental, even if it is incremental. I viewed his 30 minute interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, and he was entirely frank and reasonable about the accomplishment and its implications. As he pointed out, the synthesis and incorporation of the artificial genome was primarily a proof of concept achievement. I suspect it will take some time before a commercially viable, practical outcome will result from this technology. Even though the evolution of cells appears to have resulted from random mutations in genomes over billions of years, there is tremendous wastage and inefficiency in cellular operations as we learn more about them. This does provide the opportunity to improve on nature with rational design. As we understand more about the architecture of cell communications, I see great opportunities for the reconstruction of optimized eukaryotic-like protein kinase-based signalling systems in bacteria. Such genetically-engineered bacteria could become the basic components for the generation of nanoprocessors to drive our computers in the not so far future.
Link to the original blog post