X-no-Archive:yes
OK, but isn't there a difference between the indirect manipulation the genes
by selective breeding (even at the level of the gametes) and directly
manipulating them at the sub-cellular level? To draw an analogy with the
mind/brain, learning to read may altar my brain structure indirectly, but I
find that easier to accept than neurosurgery.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wirt Atmar [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 1999 5:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT: Friday Humor (A Day Early)

Tom writes:

> And that is the pattern throughout the book with
>  various
>  fell races.  Would be the same for us, as we go about "improving" things
> around
>  us and
>  ourselves genetically.  Eventually, we will discover that things were
best
> left
>  as they were.

Tom's comment would be absolutely true -- if it weren't for the fact that
virtually everything we eat and wear that's organically grown has already
been massively genetically modified.

Every form of grass that you eat or drink (wheat, barley, oats, rice,
sorghum, corn, etc.) is so different from its original,
fresh-out-of-the-box,
as-God-made-it form that most people would never recognize the original
varieties as the same plant -- or even find them very palatable.

The same is true of cotton. Or chickens. Or dairy cattle. Or dogs. Or beef.
The degree of marbling (fat/muscle mixture) that a breeder wants in his beef
cattle can now be "dialed in" by choosing which stored sperm are to be used
in the next round of artificial inseminations.

See, for example, just two short web pages out of several thousand that are
available on the subject are these:

http://www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/research/researchfund/rmdocs/rm3009.htm
http://www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/research/researchfund/rmdocs/rm3040.htm

Farming ain't what it used to be. In fact, it hasn't been for the last
10,000
years. But we're no longer doing genetic modification in the blind, by
trial-and-error, as we have in the past, essentially by "hacking" the code
and seeing what happens; we've been learning the rules about how organisms
are put together so well for the last half of the 20th Century that there
has
been serious and significant discussion in the last several months about the
possiblity of creating life from scratch, for the very first time.

I've included a December 14th article from the NY Times below (there's no
easy way to reference an article's URL older than today's without having to
specify the procedure to go through a fairly convoluted search process; this
is simply far easier for short pieces). The article represents fairly
clearly
the level of knowledge that we now have -- or will have in the next few
years.

By analogy, we're moving from the ranks of a neophyte teenager computer
hacker, who didn't understand a thing about how a computer is put together,
to that of a professional design engineer, although we've clearly got a long
ways to go. But things are falling together far faster than anyone expected
20 years ago.

As the article implies -- and every good engineer knows -- you never know
what you truly understand and what you don't until you begin to build the
system yourself.

========================================

December 14, 1999


Life Is Pared to Basics. Complex Issues Arise


By NICHOLAS WADE

What is life?

There are long answers to the question, and a crisp, pragmatic one.

This short answer would be to make life, on the principle that if you can
manufacture something from defined ingredients, you have a pretty good
understanding of what it is.

Dr. Clyde A. Hutchison believes that the minimal genome could lead to a
sufficient definition of life.

Biologists cannot yet synthesize a living cell from the appropriate
chemicals. But in the light of recent research findings, the project has
become at least conceivable. And the possibility raises two broad sets of
questions.

First are the philosophical issues of to what extent life would in some way
be defined. Second are the practical results that might flow from creating a
suite of artificial life forms, like microbes that could serve as more
efficient vaccines, brewing agents or biological weapons.

The ability to decode the entire DNA of small organisms has yielded an
unsurpassed view of their genetic instruction manuals.

After the full DNA, or genomes, of the first bacteria were decoded,
researchers saw the possibility of trying to define the minimum set of genes
necessary for life.

Dr. Clyde A. Hutchison, a microbiologist at the University of North Carolina
in Chapel Hill, has examined two of the smallest known bacteria, a kind
known
as Mycoplasma. Their minimum set of genes -- the ones need to survive and
replicate in a nutrient-rich environment -- is from 265 to 350, Dr.
Hutchison
and colleagues reported in last week's issue of Science.

Those genes could be synthesized, providing a minimal genome, and in
principle biologists could also make the other essential components of a
cell
-- an outer membrane of fat molecules and a set of ribosomes, the little
machines that manufacture proteins from the blueprints in the genes.

"It's a big technical challenge, and it's not something you could do on
pocket change," Dr. Hutchison said.

But such an artificial cell would, in his view, explain a lot about the
nature of life. Even more satisfying would be a computer model that
predicted
all the proteins specified by the genes, and the proteins' behaviors and
interactions. If the computer's predictions matched the cell's behavior,
that
would be proof that the programmers had grasped the cell's essential nature.

"The ultimate test of understanding a simple cell, more than being able to
build one, would be to build a computer model of the cell, because that
really requires understanding at a deeper level," Dr. Hutchison said.

For many biologists, who see an unbroken evolutionary continuum from the
first single-cell organisms to people, an artificially made microbe would be
a giant step toward understanding the nature of life.

"That would be the ultimate in saying we have got all the parts and put them
together correctly -- a fantastic human accomplishment," said Dr. Jack
Maniloff, a microbiologist at the University of Rochester.

But the concept of being able to define life in such simple terms has
disturbed a group of ethicists who studied Dr. Hutchison's idea.

"The temptation to demonize this fundamental research may be irresistible,"
they write in a companion article in Science.

The reductionist approach -- breaking complex things down to components
simple enough to be understood -- underlies biology's greatest successes.
But
it is a term of opprobrium to those who fear biologists are saying life is
nothing but atoms and molecules.

"There is a serious danger," the ethicists warn in their report, that the
synthesis of minimal genomes "will be presented by scientists, depicted in
the press or perceived by the public as proving that life is reducible to,
or
nothing more than, DNA."

Dr. Mildred K. Cho, a medical ethicist at Stanford University and an author
of the ethicists' report, noted that when biologists sequenced the first
human chromosome last month, they called it "the first chapter in the book
of
life, as if life is chromosomes."

But although the ethicists deplore what they consider to be the errors of
reductionism, they give the green light to the general principle of creating
minimal genome organisms, while preaching caution about the possible hazards
of each particular case. Thus, after consulting members of their panel drawn
from the Roman Catholic, Jewish and Protestant faiths, the ethicists
concluded, "There is nothing in the research agenda for creating a minimal
genome that is automatically prohibited by legitimate religious
considerations."

Ethicists may disdain the reductionist life-is-just-DNA approach that they
impute to scientists, but what definition would they put in its place? Dr.
Arthur L. Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania and a
member of the panel, said everyone was surprised at the outcome when the
theologian members of the panel were asked to consult the teachings of their
respective faiths for a definition of life.

"Even our own theologians were a little surprised that they couldn't find
definitions," Dr. Caplan said. "In the materials at hand and key texts, the
definitional question had not really been wrestled with."

Those who dislike the reductionist definition of life would, of course, be
in
a stronger position if they had one of their own to substitute for it. An
interesting approach along these lines is taken by Dr. Ian G. Barbour, a
physicist and theologian who teaches at Carleton College in Northfield,
Minn.
Dr. Barbour, who this year won the $1.24 million Templeton Prize for
progress
in religion, said the nature of life lay in the higher orders of
organization
of the chemicals of which living organisms are composed.

Making a minimal genome organism "would not add anything intrinsic to our
understanding, because without being a dualist, one can still say that there
are properties that only show up at higher levels of organization," Dr.
Barbour said in an interview.

"The fact that these higher levels of existence depend on their molecular
structures doesn't mean they are just molecular structures. So I don't find
any threat to human dignity or the sanctity of life that they depend on
molecules -- it doesn't mean we are just molecules," he said.

Dr. Hutchison, however, is sticking with the reductionist approach and the
idea that the minimal genome could lead to a sufficient definition of life.
"Although at some level everything about a simple living organism is implied
by its genes," he said, "on the other hand, you really have to understand
the
products of the genes and how they interact, which is much more complex than
just knowing the sequences of the genes. But I guess I do think life can be
explained from a reductionist point of view."

It is unusual for a scientist's work to appear alongside an ethical review
of
its implications. The initiative in this case came from one of Dr.
Hutchison's co-authors, Dr. J. Craig Venter, now president of the Celera
Corporation. Having decoded the first bacterial genomes, including those of
the two Mycoplasmas studied by Dr. Hutchison, Dr. Venter was concerned at
the
ethics of creating new bacteria from scratch and specifically the danger of
such microbes' being used in biological warfare, Dr. Caplan said.

Seeing a chance to assess the ethical issues of a new technology before the
horse had bolted the stable, Dr. Caplan suggested that Dr. Venter give him a
grant to convene a panel of experts.

"The creation of any life form is likely to be seen as disturbing, just
because it has never happened before," Dr. Caplan said. "It taps into
traditions of concern, from Frankenstein to Prometheus. By trying to discuss
it early, we hoped we could have a good societal debate and not one skewed
off into the fringes."

=======================================

Wirt "who worked for 11 years in agricultural entomology" Atmar