In 2007 Craig venter in response to a question said----
Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make.
And now he has created an artificial Genome of a bacterium...in his words artificial life.
Venter is seeking to patent the first life-form created by humanity, possibly to be named Mycoplasma laboratorium. There is speculation that this line of research could lead to producing bacteria that have been engineered to perform specific reactions, e.g. produce fuels, make medicines, combat global warming, etc.
In May 2010, a team of scientists led by Venter became the first to successfully create what was described as 'synthetic life.' This was done by synthesizing a very long DNA molecule containing an entire bacterium genome, and introducing this into another cell, analogous to what the group of Eckard Wimmer who synthesized and ligated an RNA virus genome and "booted" it in cell lysate.. The single-celled organism contains four "watermarks" written into its DNA to identify it as synthetic and to help trace its descendants. The watermarks include a) code table for entire alphabet with punctuations, b) names of 46 contributing scientists, c) three quotations and d) the web address for the cell.
Work of venter has started a debate over ethics. No doubt even if molecular biologists are forced, by making prohibitory laws, not to dare to go for further developments to produce artificial life the Venter's recent work is enough to produce a wide variety of deadly and dangerous as well as beneficial microorganisms on the planet earth. So there is an urgent need to sit and formulate regulatory laws so as only the beneficial research in this direction must proceed and be encouraged and must go on.
I think the Akshya patra of Dropadi in Mahabharat was the example of such microorganisms in a vessel which could trap atmospheric carbon [in the form of CO2] and water vapors and make desired types of Carbohydrates, Proteins and fats in the presence of sun light as most of the green plants and algae and some of the microorganisms are doing via photosynthesis. The microorganisms do it very fast in comparison to green plants.In theory post venter's biological achievements may progress in the direction to synthesize in lab such microorganism that one spoonful of them can almost instantaneously produce a very large amount of food [of desired taste] in the presence of sun light. And the Akshay Patra was given to Pandavas by God Sun could do it in the past.It could make foods of desired taste and amount out of the atmosphere.
Present day science is progressing towards a culture which is described in our old holy text. In near future development of a modern Akshaya Patra is eminent and it will re-enforced my idea that a very scientifically developed culture existed on earth in recent past say about few thousand years back.
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