Synthetic organisms are about to challenge what 'alive' really means

In 2016, Craig Venter and his team at Synthetic Genomics announced that they had created a lifeform called JCVI-syn3.0, whose genome consisted of only 473 genes. Venter’s achievement followed an earlier breakthrough in 2014, when Floyd Romesberg at Romesberg Lab in California succeeded in creating xeno nucleic acid, a synthetic alternative to DNA, using amino acids not found among the naturally occurring four nucleotides: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. In the near future we can reasonably anticipate that a large number of unnatural single-cell life forms will be created using artificially edited genomes to correct for genetic defects or to add new features to an organism’s phenotype. We can also anticipate that new life forms may be created that have never existed in nature through the use of conventional and perhaps artificially arranged codons. Vint Cerf is the co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocol and Google’s vice president and chief internet evangelist More from The WIRED World 2019 – Meet the companies fixing depression by stimulating neurons – An e-bike revolution is about to upend urban transport – How companies will use AI tackle workplace harassment – The blockchain needs protecting from quantum hackers Get the best of WIRED in your inbox every Saturday with the WIRED Weekender newsletter This article was originally published by WIRED UK