ed_rex

Apparently a team of American researchers have created life.

That's right. Create life, out of its constituent bits, like building brand new house of building blocks. Or so I understand it.

Nature has an article about it here and to the best of my understanding that's exactly what they're claiming to have done.

"With this approach we now have the ability to start with a DNA sequence and design organisms exactly like we want ... We can get down to the very nucleotide level and make any changes we want to a genome." (Emphases mine.)

This isn't to say that scientists (or your a-social cousin Mary) are going to be churning out designer pets or new diseases next year, but the door first pushed ajar by Watson and Crick sure as hell looks wide open to me.

In honour of this potentially [insert adjective of choice] world, a poll:

[Poll #1566999]