Scientists Approach the Creation of Artificial Life

After being able to perform a "species transplant" on bacterium, U.S. scientists seem poised to create the first new form of artificial life. By following the same process used in the transplant but using a synthetic genome made from scratch in the laboratory, biologists hope to create a synthetic lifeform within the next few months.

Possible applications would be to "create new kinds of bacterium to make new types of bugs which can be used as green fuels to replace oil and coal, digest toxic waste or absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere." The issue, of course, is moral, as some argue against the idea of "playing god" and the potential for the technology to be abused to create a new generation of bioweapons.

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