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J. Craig Venter's
Next Big Goal:
Creating New Life
By GAUTAM NAIK
June 29, 2007; Page B1


Biologist J. Craig Venter and his colleagues have changed one species of
bacteria into another, a key step on the road to building what could be
the world's first artificial living organism.

Having famously deciphered the human genome seven years ago, Dr. Venter is
now helping to pioneer a nascent field known as synthetic biology. He
hopes to create -- and cash in on -- a new life-form that has never
existed in nature. This microscopic creature would be engineered for
specific commercial jobs, such as churning out a bio-fuel or sucking up
carbon dioxide from the air to fight global warming.

"It will be a new species," says Dr. Venter, 60 years old, who is also
seeking to patent the new would-be life-form, dubbed Mycoplasma
laboratorium. Details of the latest technique, which is a step toward that
goal, were published online this week in the journal Science. The paper is
co-authored by Dr. Venter and others, including his colleagues Carol
Lartigue and Hamilton Smith, who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Medicine.

"It's an impressive piece of work," says Eckard Wimmer, a professor of
microbiology at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in Stony Brook,
N.Y., who read the paper in Science. Dr. Wimmer should know: In 2002, he
and other scientists made an infectious polio virus from DNA snippets
purchased from a mail-order firm in part to see if it could be done, a
process that took two years to complete. The following year, a team led by
Dr. Venter said they had created a different synthetic virus -- but in
just two weeks.

However, a virus isn't strictly considered to be a living thing, since it
can't reproduce on its own -- instead, it needs to infect a host to do so.
Many scientists agree that no one has yet created a true living artificial
organism. Even if Dr. Venter gets there first, other researchers are
already seeing their synthetic-biology experiments turned to commercial
uses.

With the help of several million dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, Amyris Biotechnologies of Emeryville, Calif., has created
designer microbes that pump out chemicals for artemisinin, an antimalarial
drug typically harvested from a plant. The company expects large-scale
commercial production to start in 2008.

A start-up called LS9 Inc. in San Carlos, Calif., has made microbes that
can produce a bio-fuel and is also about to commercialize its invention.
DuPont Co. and Genencor of Palo Alto, Calif., a division of Danish
food-ingredients-and-sugar company Danisco AS, have added synthetic bits
to the genetic machinery of E.coli so that the bacteria churn out the key
chemical material for Sorona, a new, nylon-like fiber.

But the field is unfolding so swiftly that some observers say ethical,
legal and even national-security issues are being left far behind. Many
critics fret that there aren't enough safeguards to prevent a man-made
microbe from running amok due to terrorism or negligence.

The dangers are real. Almost any skilled geneticist with a laptop,
published gene sequence information and mail-order DNA can potentially
create a lethal artificial pathogen. Three years after Dr. Wimmer created
his artificial polio virus, other U.S. scientists caused even greater
alarm when they resurrected the deadly 1918 "Spanish flu" virus, which
killed more than 40 million people at the beginning of the 20th century.

The complete genome sequences of more than 100 microbial pathogens,
including smallpox, anthrax and Ebola, have long been available on
Internet databases. "There's a dangerous component to the whole
synthetic-biology field," says Dr. Wimmer. "There's a great benefit, but
it could be misused."

For now, researchers involved in synthetic biology intend to regulate
themselves. But calls for new rules are growing. Last year, 38 civil
society groups, including Greenpeace International and Friends of the
Earth International, released an open letter seeking more governmental
oversight of synthetic-biology experiments. In January, ETC Group, a
Canadian watchdog organization, called for a ban on artificial "life
machines" until rules could be established.

For the past two years, a group of synthetic-biology scientists and
public-policy experts have been compiling a report, sponsored by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit group, to address
key issues, such as where the science is headed and how the bioterrorism
risk may be reduced. Although it contains no specific recommendations, a
draft version was discussed at a December meeting in Washington, D.C.,
where attendees included staff from the Central Intelligence Agency and
the Department of Homeland Security. The final report will be available
later this summer.

Some critics worry that if key techniques are given broad patents -- as
sought by Dr. Venter -- it could hold back the entire field of synthetic
biology. Several months ago, Dr. Venter's J. Craig Venter Institute
applied for world-wide patents for a lab-constructed microbe. Dr. Venter
hopes to eventually manipulate this organism to create biofuels or absorb
carbon dioxide. But earlier this year, when the patents were finally
published, Canada's ETC group asked the U.S. patent office to reject them
on the grounds that they were too broad and therefore would stifle
innovation. Dr. Venter disagrees, saying that there are potentially dozens
of ways to create life-forms in the lab. In his patent request, Dr. Venter
is laying claim to the set of genes that make the organism, as well as the
organism itself.

Although Dr. Venter hasn't created his man-made organism yet, his team is
closing in. They are currently stringing together laboratory chemicals and
assembling the new genetic code for their synthetic organism, a process
which Dr. Venter expects will be completed before the end of the year. The
next step would be to find a way to spark that synthetic genome into life,
so that it becomes a full-functioning organism. That's where Dr. Venter's
bacteria-swap experiment comes in.

In their experiment, the team transplanted the DNA from a bacterium called
Mycoplasma mycoides into the cells of a closely related species,
Mycoplasma capricolum. The recipient cells somehow chemically booted up
the transplanted DNA and that yielded cells that were identical to the
mycoides donor cells. As the authors described it in their paper, "the
result is a clean change of one bacterial species into another."

Dr. Venter needs that same "booting-up" ability to create an artificial
life form. Once the synthetic genome is built in the lab, he plans to
transplant it into a living bacterial cell in the hope that, it, too, will
be "booted up." If that happens, it would mark the birth of the first
living synthetic organism that can reproduce on its own.

"There's been more speculation in this field than scientific data," says
Dr. Venter. "But now we're closer to the goal" of making useful artificial
organisms.

Write to Gautam Naik at

Having famously deciphered the human genome seven years ago, Dr. Venter is
now helping to pioneer a nascent field known as synthetic biology. He hopes
to create -- and cash in on -- a new life-form that has never existed in
nature.