Admit it: you wouldn’t mind winning a Nobel Prize. Well here’s a science project for you: reverse global warming, solve the world’s energy crisis, and pave the way for breakthrough antibiotics and vaccines… all in one fell swoop. The modest task before you? Create the world’s first synthetic life form, and make it dance.
Now for the bad news. You’ve got competition. Some of the best scientists across the globe are chasing the holy grail of biology, and they’re making some serious headway. The prospect of man-made life is becoming less a question of if, and more a question of when. But can gene engineering really save the world? Can it destroy it?
Welcome to the wonderful world of synthetic genomics.
The Idea
The first step to cooking up your own life form is to understand the language it’s written in: DNA. The genetic revolution of the past few decades has allowed scientists to sequence whole genomes, from fruit flies and rats to our very own species. Once the genomes are mapped, the task becomes making a synthetic copy, A by T by C by G. DNA gets stitched together using a combination of different lab techniques, with the final goal of building a whole genome. Different research teams have taken different approaches, and the race is on to see who succeeds first.
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