[Nasional-e] In U.S. lab, researchers plot a new life form

[Ambon]

In U.S. lab, researchers plot a new life form
Justin Gillis The Washington Post  Friday, November 22, 2002

WASHINGTON Scientists are planning to create a new form of life in a
laboratory dish, a project that raises ethical and safety issues but also
promises to illuminate the fundamental mechanics of living organisms.
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J. Craig Venter, a gene scientist with a history of pulling off unlikely
successes, and Hamilton Smith, a molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, are
behind the project, funded by a $3 million grant from the U.S. government.
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Their intent is to create a single-celled, partly man-made organism with the
minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life. If the experiment works,
the microscopic cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population
of cells unlike any previously known to exist.
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To ensure safety, Smith and Venter said the cell would be deliberately
hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people. It also will be strictly
confined and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the
environment. More worrisome than the risk of escape, they acknowledged, is
that the project could lay the scientific groundwork for a new generation of
biological weapons, a risk that may force them to be selective about
publishing technical details. But they said the project could also help
advance the ability to detect and counter existing biological weapons. The
project, funded with a three-year grant from the Energy Department, will
start as a pure scientific endeavor, but it could eventually have practical
applications. If Venter and his collaborators manage to create a minimalist
organism of the sort they envision, they will attempt to add new functions
to it one at a time - conferring on it the ability, for example, to break
down the carbon dioxide from power plant emissions or to produce hydrogen
for fuel.
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The more immediate plan is to try to puzzle out, and eventually model in a
computer, every conceivable aspect of the biology of one organism, a feat
science has never come close to accomplishing. Because all living cells are
based on the same chemistry and bear striking resemblances to one another,
that could shed light on all of biology.
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"We are wondering if we can come up with a molecular definition of life,"
Venter said. "The goal is to fundamentally understand the components of the
most basic living cell."
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The project is not entirely new. Venter initiated an earlier version of it
in the late 1990s while running a Rockville, Maryland, institute he founded
called the Institute for Genomic Research. With his collaborators, he got as
far as publishing a working list of the genes apparently required to sustain
life in a single-celled organism called Mycoplasma genitalium, the
self-replicating organism with the smallest known complement of genetic
material. That work indicated that under at least some laboratory
conditions, the organism could get by with only 300 or so of its 517 genes.
People, by contrast, have an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 genes.
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The project fell by the wayside when Venter and Smith started Celera
Genomics, the company in Rockville that raced publicly funded researchers to
a tie two years ago in compiling draft maps of the entire human genetic
complement, the genome. Venter resigned from Celera early this year in a
dispute over its future direction. He is financing a series of new
initiatives, including the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives,
also in Rockville, the entity that will house a revived project to build the
artificial organism.
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The Energy Department grant, awarded recently, will pay for a staff of about
25 to pursue the project over three years, though Venter and Smith
acknowledged it could take longer. Smith, widely considered one of the
world's most skilled scientists at manipulating DNA, will direct the
laboratory work.
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The project will begin with M. genitalium, a minuscule organism that lives
in the genital tracts of people and may cause or contribute to some cases of
urethritis, an inflammation of the urethra.
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The scientists will remove all genetic material from the organism, then
synthesize an artificial string of genetic material, resembling a naturally
occurring chromosome, that they hope will contain the minimum number of M.
genitalium genes needed to sustain life. The artificial chromosome will be
inserted into the hollowed-out cell, which will then be tested for its
ability to survive and reproduce.
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Ari Patrinos, a senior Energy Department administrator who will help oversee
the project, said the organism was an attractive starting point to create a
"minimal genome" because it is so minimal already.
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"We know even the simplest of cells is incredibly complicated," Patrinos
said; too complicated, at least so far, to understand completely. "This is a
case where we're trying to cheat a little bit, to take the smallest and
simplest and make it smaller and simpler."The project raises philosophical,
ethical and practical questions. For example, if a man-made organism proved
able to survive and reproduce only under a narrow range of laboratory
conditions, could it really be considered life?
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More broadly, do scientists have any moral right to create new organisms?
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A panel of ethicists and religious leaders, convened several years ago at
Venter's request, has already wrestled with the latter issue.
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The group, which included a rabbi and a priest, concluded that if the
ultimate goal was to benefit mankind and if all appropriate safeguards were
followed, the project could be regarded as ethical.