Monday, October 22, 2007

it lives! ...maybe?

On a Halloween-y note, scientists are hard at work creating life from scratch, starting with a minimal genome while still trying to produce critters that is technically "alive". It's an interesting to think about, they based the genome off Mycoplasma genitalium, then knocked out genes until it could no longer function. What would happen if they took a large viral genome like pox and added genes until it "lived"?
Dr. Frankenstein would be proud.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7041353.stm

-Rebecca Hebner

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