Nature reports that Craig Venter and his team at the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Maryland have build a virus from scratch in 2 weeks.
The team used enzymes to glue the oligonucleotides together accurately into the complete 5,386-base genetic strand, and to copy it many times. When the synthetic viral genome was injected into bacteria, the bacterial cell's machinery read the instructions and created fully fledged viruses.
If that doesn't scare the proverbial out of you then you haven't thought carefully enough about the consequences.
There are many jewels hidden amongst the leaves in this forgotten part of the ancient forest. Spend some time browsing and you are sure to find some. Click here or continue your search below
or read the most recent entries here.I'm not a science type, but I know a cold chill down my spine makes sense when reading something like this.
I sometimes wonder what we'll unleash.
And find out too late it was some lab person playing around.
And I wonder how many times in the past God intervened in our arrogance and said...not yet.
Blog on!
Hmm...shades of "The Stand"
Posted by: Jonathan at November 18, 2003 12:19 AM
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