Craig Venter

[David Blacklock]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/crai ... _life.html

Any believers in evolution might want to hear this lecture from the cutting edge of biological research, by Craig Venter - heading one of the teamns racing to be the first to publish the human genome.

DB

[zoegirl]

He is very clear throughout the video that they are NOT making cells from scratch. IN fact, all they are doing is reverse enginnering, some chop shop bioengineering to make cells do whay we want....really, really cool stuff but you have to admit, this is the stuff that drives the sci-fi horror movies aabout science gone wrong.

I can just imagine a new movie coming out about them creating a new cell to use all of the extra CO2 to convert it into fuels and losing control of the suicide gene (let's see, those bacteria mutating so that the suicide gene no longer works...) and throwing the CO2 balance on the earth into chaos, all of the plants dying with the low CO2 amount so fast....losing our O2 produced by those plants.....Hmmm....

Although it is very fascinating to see the possible applications for this. Thanks.

[David Blacklock]

Very nice assessment, Zoegirl, and I'm so glad someone listened to it in its entirety. It's very complex but overall very exciting with, as you said, a scifi edge and ethical issues. I noticed that he referred his work to an ethics commission before he even started.

As you noted, he's not pretending to create life. In his words, "This is not genesis. This is building on 3 1/2 billion years of evolution."

DB

[zoegirl]

"This is not genesis. This is building on 3 1/2 billion years of evolution."

Of course, that in itself is simply his conclusion

I think I am going to assign this to my AP Bio students to watch, let them ponder this....

[David Blacklock]

I'd wish I could be a fly on the wall for the subsequent discussions your students have. That sort of project is the sort that sometimes settles students in on a career choice.

DB

[zoegirl]

Yeah, I have an interesting class coming up. Many of them I had for my Anatomy class this year and they are choosing to take AP Bio this year. While a few will struggle with the harder concepts (respiration, their brains are whirling after that unit....) I am happy that I have a good group that are interested.

I actually had one student in my General Anatomy class come up to me this year and ask for hardedr reading material. Based on the questions he had, I challenged him to read me Cell Biology Book from college (you probably know it, Alberts, Moleculear Biology of the Cell). DO you know, he actually read through it! He then begged to take chemistry and double up on his sciences so that he could take AP Bio this year....yeah I'm excited.

[David Blacklock]

What a bonus student!

DB

[godslanguage]

This is an example of what Darwinian Evolution is not. Venter even stated that even though they are using existing design, there is no room for hope since this is a matter of engineering and not some sort of waiting game expecting results to come through without paying attention to details.

[David Blacklock]

Hi GL,

Glad you watched that. No, certainly not run of the mill evolution. More like a more sophisticated version of animal husbandry: "Hey, let's breed that frisky dog that runs fast and helps me hunt to that re-haired female. Some of the pups might not only be frisky, but would blend in with the forest better! Only he's trying to develop bacteria that would eat CO2 at a coal burning plant, the excretory product being a new fuel source - and other exciting applications. Same song 200th verse. I'll bet God's proud of Craig Venter.

DB