Synthetic life by the end of the year

New research suggests we are close. Should we be concerned? Are the risks any different to standard genetic modification? Is the question about sanctity of life a realistic one?

Synthetic life by the end of the year.  At least that is what Craig Venter has predicted in the wake of his latest success on the path to doing just that. What does this mean and should we be concerned?
 
Venter’s team managed to manipulate a bacterial genome enough to allow it to be transplanted and rebooted into life in the shell of different species of bacteria.  The trick was overcoming the new bacteria’s “immune system” which they did by first transferring the DNA into a yeast cell where manipulating DNA is significantly easier.  In separate research, George Church of Harvard University has found a way to improve entire biochemical pathways in bacteria that means in just a few days he can generate new strains of bacteria that can make all sorts of useful chemicals. All the technical stuff on how this done is explained in
Discover magazine
There are some interesting comments at the end of this article as well
 
Science (subscription needed)
 
Two science teachers (hardly a statistically significant number) at a recent conference raised this research with me and expressed concerns….concerns they couldn’t quite articulate, but environmental damage and dangerous bugs unleashed were somewhere in the mix.  And they made the distinction between synthetic biology and the genetic modification of plants or bacteria, which they had relatively minimal issues with.
 
I agree that these concerns about synthetic biology are real and that an ethical discussion about how this technology might be used and its potential societal consequences needs to be had.  But I can’t see the difference between synthetic life where we effectively write the genetic code and genetic modification where we just tinker with it.  The potential dangers are the same and the regulatory oversight required to manage these risks would be the same. For example, it only takes a minor genetic tweak to turn a benign virus into a deadly one, or to raise the levels of a natural plant toxin from harmless to dangerous, things we can and have done.
 
When we drilled down into the teachers’ thoughts a bit more, however, it emerged that much of their concern actually surrounded the concept of sanctity of life, that humans don’t have the right to dictate what living things are placed on this earth. As far as I could tell, these teachers were not religious in anyway, but I don’t think you have to be to feel this sort of moral tug that we are playing with things we shouldn’t.  A number of the blog comments on this research reflect similar misgivings.  Again, however, I don’t see the distinction between this and genetic modification.  If we don’t have the right to do one then surely we don’t have the right to do the other.  In both cases, we are manipulating the code of life.
 
Craig Venter is known for making grandiose claims.  But my guess is that this claim is correct even if the timeframe might be a bit out. 
 
Jason Major
Manager
GNTIS