more (at source): Carole Lartigue and colleagues removed the bacteria's entire genome and inserted it into the yeast - an organism that is distant from bacteria on the tree of life.

Yeast is easier to manipulate in the lab and this process allowed the team to alter the genes - in this case, deleting one gene not necessary for bacteria to live.

cake there was another scientist who played with this way back in the early 20th Centuary I just can't recall who this fellow was.

The life forms created lasted so many hours and then fizzled. If I find it I will let you know.

Always have a few trepidations when I read about stuff like this... I suppose it is hoping wisdom rulz

i thought somebody had kidnapped my roommates for a moment- when i read the artificial life thing-

I don't like it when humans meddle too much with nature like this. It will undoubtedly come back to bite us, when these yeast/bacteria decide to overrun and overtake the world, multiplying out of control and demanding better food than just yucky oil slicks, etc. .

Okay... maybe I read too much horror sci-fi, but I still don't like it.

I wonder how this will be addressed by the espousers of "advaita," non-dualism, solipsism, awareness, consciousness doctrines, who already have determined that we, ourselves, are artificial illusional life forms to begin with.

How is gene-splicing, cloning, synthesis, symbiosis, or whatever sobriquet one wishes to use, to be construed as creating Artificial Life if the essential ingredient for the recipe is a living bacteria?

This is just another lab looking to get funding to meet their payroll on Friday.

I agree with you Steve--they are still not creating it from scratch. And i also worry about future ramifications, when scientists start messing around like this. Who knows how this could interact out in the real world? Or what other moral dilemma's we could end up creating? I'm not an alarmist, but this stuff worries me. Same with that black hole (?) they're trying to create in the lab. Sure it's supposedly too small, but what happens if someone decides to make it bigger. And remember the cloning issue? Now it turns out animals are being cloned all over the place....
Okay, i'll stop ranting now.

And remember the cloning issue? Now it turns out animals are being cloned all over the place.

Now we have the technology that can make a cloned child.

Robert Lanza, M.D., author of "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe" and, Advanced Cell Technology's Chief Scientific Officer, has successfully Cloned Human Embryos.

With all the secret bio-experimentation being conducted all over the world, it may not be long before we'll look about us and feel as though we've been transported to H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau.

I have read elsewhere of the transplanting of human consciousness into the brain of a mouse, human genes into pigs, and God knows what else.

When you think of the possibilities this presents, It's actually very scary.

What really bothers me, is that WE CAN'T THINK OF ALL THE POSSIBILITIES! That's where the problem lies. That's where we keep getting into trouble.

Thats more dangerous than any nuclear bomb! Bombs will left any life on earth - but artificial life is probably able, to destroy every natural life - including microbes.
That it will bring a disaster is absolutely sure.

PS:
Hallo, thisnamecantbetaken!
I don't read any horror stuff!
But I know, what natural life can destroy, if it is set into an environment, that has no evolved any creature to decrease it! Although it could be happen, that Kamtschatka giant crabs - for example - come to the Barents-Sea, or giant bullfrogs from America to Europe - but at first, those creatures destroy a lot of endemic life and erase mostly some kind of plants or animals from earth's surface. What will do a species, that has no concurrent in any kind in the whole world?
I hope, their creatures will eat them first!!!