With the amount of people on our earth growing every day we need a way to get what we need, from antibiotics and vaccines to ways to clean our water. Scientists announced that they took the DNA from one simple germ from the family of Mycoplasms, built it from scratch and twice as large. They then implanted it into another member of the Mycoplasms and watched what happened. That germ then proceeded to multiply and act like the first Mycoplasm that they copied the DNA from!
"This is transforming life totally from one species to another by changing the software" - J. Craig Venter (scientist)
With this breakthrough there are many of aspirations for the future. Knowing that they can do this, their hope is that they can program microbes to digest pollutants, or even produce fuels.
This step in science isn't all good news. Bound to get it's protesters for tinkering with nature there are many people that are expected not to be a fan of this news. Besides that, the technology to create DNA to do what we ask, there is potential for it to be used for war, hurt and pain.
This is just the first step though, we have a long way to go until we can create what we want.
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