Scientists a step closer to creating artificial life

Harvard University scientists are a step closer to creating synthetic forms of life, part of a drive to design man-made organisms that may one day be used to help to produce new fuels and create biotechnology drugs.

Researchers led by George Church, whose findings spurred the US human genome project in the 1980s, have copied the part of a living cell that makes proteins, the building blocks of life.

The finding overcame a roadblock in making synthetic self-replicating organisms, Church said yesterday in a lecture at Harvard in Massachusetts.

The technology could be used to programme cells to make virtually any protein, even some that did not exist in nature, the scientists said.

That may allow production of helpful new drugs, chemicals and organisms, including living bacteria. It also opens the door to ethical concerns about creation of processes that may be uncontrollable by life's natural defences.

"It's the key component to making synthetic life," Church said in a telephone call with reporters. "We haven't made synthetic life and it's not our primary goal, but this is a huge milestone in that direction."

The work may be immediately helpful to companies such as Synthetic Genomics, headed by J. Craig Venter, trying to make new organisms that perform specific tasks, such as converting buried coal into methane gas that is easier to extract from the ground.

Venter's plan is to create manmade microbes that can help to break down the coal in the earth, much as bacteria speed the decomposition of plant material.

In a conference for alumni yesterday at Harvard, Church described how his team assembled a reconstituted ribosome, the first artificial version of the structure capable of remaking itself.

Naturally occurring ribosomes are used now when biotechnology companies genetically engineer cells to make the proteins for vaccines and drugs, such as Genentech's Herceptin.

A man made, or reconstituted, ribosome may be programmable to make all kinds of molecules.

- BLOOMBERG