Frankenstein's Monster: Building New Life

Dr. J. Craig Venter of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, MD, claims that he and his team of geneticists are on the verge of discovering the essence of life, and are close to having the capability to create a synthetic life form. "Shelley would have loved this," Venter remarks, comparing his research to the eighteenth century novelist who wrote about creating a man out of "spare parts". Unlike the Frankenstein Monster, however, Venter's synthetic organism would be constructed out of bits and pieces of DNA taken from a single-celled organisms called Mycoplasma genitalium.

M. genitalium, a harmless bacteria which lives in the human reproductive tract, has the smallest genome (470 genes) of any known life form. Humans by comparison, have an estimated 80,000-100,000 genes, or more. "We are attempting to understand what the minimum set of genes is," Venter said. By randomly splicing away genes and then watching to see if the cells survive, the work is slow going. The team was able to get that number down to 300 distinct genes and believes this is the number of essential genes required for an organism to live.

Venter predicts that once the essential number of genes has been positively determined, "building" a synthetic organism would simply require piecing DNA nucleotides together to make the genes and then piecing those genes to create the chromosomes. Before they start, though, Venter wants opinions from ethicists and theologians. "We are asking whether it is ethical to synthetically create life. We think this discussion is totally worthwhile... because it gets down to the definition of what life is."