Some adverse consequences that the people of the world will not want to live with if artificial life forms of many types begin to intermingle with naturally created life

     J. Craig Venter is the founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute and also of Synthetic Genomics Incorporated.  He is responsible for the very first cloning sequence of human DNA in 1977.  He has since created synthetic cells and synthetic chromosomes, and has the intentions to create “cell software” that will provide instructions for these synthetic chromosomes to have the correct DNA sequences passed to them.

     If he is successful at this, just what will the magnitude of the adverse consequences be, when artificial life is real eased into the ecosystem and intermingles with naturally created life?

     He is claiming that this is the next industrial revolution.  He might be right about this claim, but he blatantly ignores both likely and remote possibilities of the realities of negative consequences resulting from the creation of synthetic life in the form of animal, human, animal-human hybrid, or the creation of entire new species of animals.

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The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. There are three main kinds of Alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate some aspects of biological phenomena. The term "artificial intelligence" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife.

Artificial life (often abbreviated ALife or A-Life) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry.  The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986.  There are three main kinds of Alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate some aspects of biological phenomena.  The term "artificial intelligence" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife.

Artificial life studies the logic of living systems in artificial environments in order to gain a deeper understanding of the complex information processing that defines such systems.

Also sometimes included in the umbrella term "artificial life" are agent based systems which are used to study the emergent properties of societies of agents.

While life is, by definition, alive, artificial life is generally referred to as being confined to a digital environment and existence.

The modeling philosophy of alife strongly differs from traditional modeling by studying not only “life-as-we-know-it” but also “life-as-it-might-be”.

A traditional model of a biological system will focus on capturing its most important parameters. In contrast, an alife modeling approach will generally seek to decipher the most simple and general principles underlying life and implement them in a simulation. The simulation then offers the possibility to analyse new and different lifelike systems.

Vladimir Georgievich Red'ko proposed to generalize this distinction to the modeling of any process, leading to the more general distinction of "processes-as-we-know-them" and "processes-as-they-could-be"

At present, the commonly accepted definition of life does not consider any current alife simulations or software to be alive, and they do not constitute part of the evolutionary process of any ecosystem. However, different opinions about artificial life's potential have arisen:

The strong alife (cf. Strong AI) position states that "life is a process which can be abstracted away from any particular medium" (John von Neumann). Notably, Tom Ray declared that his program Tierra is not simulating life in a computer but synthesizing it.[citation needed]
The weak alife position denies the possibility of generating a "living process" outside of a chemical solution. Its researchers try instead to simulate life processes to understand the underlying mechanics of biological phenomena.

Cellular automata were used in the early days of artificial life, and are still often used for ease of scalability and parallelization. Alife and cellular automata share a closely tied history.
Neural networks are sometimes used to model the brain of an agent. Although traditionally more of an artificial intelligence technique, neural nets can be important for simulating population dynamics of organisms that can learn. The symbiosis between learning and evolution is central to theories about the development of instincts in organisms with higher neurological complexity, as in, for instance, the Baldwin effect.


Notable simulators

This is a list of artificial life/digital organism simulators, organized by the method of creature definition.


Program-based

Further information: programming game Program-based simulations contain organisms with a complex DNA language, usually Turing complete. This language is more often in the form of a computer program than actual biological DNA. Assembly derivatives are the most common languages used. An organism "lives" when its code is executed, and there are usually various methods allowing self-replication. Mutations are generally implemented as random changes to the code. Use of cellular automata is common but not required. Another example could be an artificial intelligence and multi-agent system/program.


Module-based

Individual modules are added to a creature. These modules modify the creature's behaviors and characteristics either directly, by hard coding into the simulation (leg type A increases speed and metabolism), or indirectly, through the emergent interactions between a creature's modules (leg type A moves up and down with a frequency of X, which interacts with other legs to create motion). Generally these are simulators which emphasize user creation and accessibility over mutation and evolution.


Parameter-based

Organisms are generally constructed with pre-defined and fixed behaviors that are controlled by various parameters that mutate. That is, each organism contains a collection of numbers or other finite parameters. Each parameter controls one or several aspects of an organism in a well-defined way.


Neural net–based

These simulations have creatures that learn and grow using neural nets or a close derivative. Emphasis is often, although not always, more on learning than on natural selection.

Robot Hardware-based artificial life mainly consist of robots, that is, automatically guided machines able to do tasks on their own.


Synthetic biology

Biochemical-based life is studied in the field of synthetic biology. It involves e.g. the creation of synthetic DNA. The term "wet" is an extension of the term "wetware".

Artificial intelligence has traditionally used a top down approach, while alife generally works from the bottom up.  Artificial chemistry started as a method within the Alife community to abstract the processes of chemical reactions.  Evolutionary algorithms are a practical application of the weak Alife principle applied to optimization problems. Many optimization algorithms have been crafted which borrow from or closely mirror Alife techniques. The primary difference lies in explicitly defining the fitness of an agent by its ability to solve a problem, instead of its ability to find food, reproduce, or avoid death.


The following is a list of evolutionary algorithms closely related to and used in Alife:

Ant colony optimization
Evolutionary algorithm
Genetic algorithm
Genetic programming
Swarm intelligence
Evolutionary art uses techniques and methods from artificial life to create new forms of art.
Evolutionary music uses similar techniques, but applied to music instead of visual art.
Abiogenesis and the origin of life sometimes employ alife methodologies as well.


Alife has had a controversial history. John Maynard Smith criticized certain artificial life work in 1994 as "fact-free science".  However, the recent publication of artificial life articles in widely read journals such as Science and Nature is evidence that artificial life techniques are becoming more accepted in the mainstream, at least as a method of studying evolution.



Molecules and Thoughts Y Tarnopolsky - 2003 "Artificial Life (often abbreviated as Alife or A-life) is a small universe existing parallel to the much larger Artificial Intelligence. The origins of both areas were different."

The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, The MIT Press, p.37. ISBN 978-0-262-73144-7

Mark A. Bedau (November 2003). "Artificial life: organization, adaptation and complexity from the bottom up" TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences.

Maciej Komosinski and Andrew Adamatzky (2009). Artificial Life Models in Software. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-84882-284-9.

Andrew Adamatzky and Maciej Komosinski (2009). Artificial Life Models in Hardware. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-1-84882-529-1.

Langton, Christopher. "What is Artificial Life?". Archived from the original on 17 January 2007.

John Johnston, (2008) "The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI", MIT Press

Langton, C. G. 1992. Artificial Life. Addison-Wesley.

Red'ko, V. G. 1999. Mathematical Modeling of Evolution. in: F. Heylighen, C. Joslyn and V. Turchin Principia Cybernetica Web (Principia Cybernetica, Brussels).

The Future of Scientific Simulations: from Artificial Life to Artificial Cosmogenesis. In Death And Anti-Death, ed. Charles Tandy, 6: Thirty Years After Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) p. 285-318. Ria University Press.)

"AI Beyond Computer Games".
Horgan, J. 1995. From Complexity to Perplexity. Scientific American. p107

"Evolution experiments with digital organisms".

Computers: Artificial Life at the open directory project

Computers: Artificial Life Framework
International Society of Artificial Life

Artificial Life MIT Press Journal

The Artificial Life Lab Envirtech Island, Second Life
aDiatomea: an artificial life experiment using highly detailed 3D-generated diatoms
















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Dr Venter told BBC News: "We've now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism. "As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code." The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA. "This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell," said Dr Venter. 'New industrial revolution' Dr Venter and his colleagues hope eventually to design and build new bacteria that will perform useful functions. "I think they're going to potentially create a new industrial revolution," he said.

'Artificial life' breakthrough announced by scientists and the ethics concern over synthetic cells controlled by their DNA and the possibility future development of synthetic chromosomes and synthetic bacteria.

Will new organisms released into the ecosystem pose new grave dangers that are impossible to predict, and thus creating dilemmas that are impossible to solve?


Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.

The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA.

The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms.

Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated.

But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases.

The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California.

Craig Venter defends the synthetic living cell he and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another.

Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a "synthetic cell", although only its genome is truly synthetic.

The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used "synthesis machines" to chemically construct a copy.

The scientists "decoded" the chromosome of an existing bacterial cell - using a computer to read each of the letters of genetic code.

Dr Venter told BBC News: "We've now been able to take our synthetic chromosome and transplant it into a recipient cell - a different organism.

"As soon as this new software goes into the cell, the cell reads [it] and converts into the species specified in that genetic code."

The new bacteria replicated over a billion times, producing copies that contained and were controlled by the constructed, synthetic DNA.

"This is the first time any synthetic DNA has been in complete control of a cell," said Dr Venter.

'New industrial revolution'
Dr Venter and his colleagues hope eventually to design and build new bacteria that will perform useful functions.

"I think they're going to potentially create a new industrial revolution," he said.

"If we can really get cells to do the production that we want, they could help wean us off oil and reverse some of the damage to the environment by capturing carbon dioxide."

Even some scientists worry we lack the means to weigh up the risks such novel organisms might represent, once set loose”

Dr Venter and his colleagues are already collaborating with pharmaceutical and fuel companies to design and develop chromosomes for bacteria that would produce useful fuels and new vaccines.

But critics say that the potential benefits of synthetic organisms have been overstated.

Dr Helen Wallace from Genewatch UK, an organisation that monitors developments in genetic technologies, told BBC News that synthetic bacteria could be dangerous.

"If you release new organisms into the environment, you can do more harm than good," she said.

"By releasing them into areas of pollution, [with the aim of cleaning it up], you're actually releasing a new kind of pollution.

"We don't know how these organisms will behave in the environment."

The risks are unparalleled, we need safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse ”

"He isn't God," she said, "he's actually being very human; trying to get money invested in his technology and avoid regulation that would restrict its use."

But Dr Venter said that he was "driving the discussions" about the regulations governing this relatively new scientific field and about the ethical implications of the work.

He said: "In 2003, when we made the first synthetic virus, it underwent an extensive ethical review that went all the way up to the level of the White House.

"And there have been extensive reviews including from the National Academy of Sciences, which has done a comprehensive report on this new field.

"We think these are important issues and we urge continued discussion that we want to take part in."

Ethical discussions
Dr Gos Micklem, a geneticist from the University of Cambridge, said that the advance was "undoubtedly a landmark" study.

But, he said, "there is already a wealth of simple, cheap, powerful and mature techniques for genetically engineering a range of organisms. Therefore, for the time being, this approach is unlikely to supplant existing methods for genetic engineering".

The ethical discussions surrounding the creation of synthetic or artificial life are set to continue.

Professor Julian Savulescu, from the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, said the potential of this science was "in the far future, but real and significant".

"But the risks are also unparalleled," he continued. "We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse.

"These could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm."

The advance did not pose a danger in the form of bio-terrorism, Dr Venter said.

"That was reviewed extensively in the US in a report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Washington defence think tank, indicating that there were very small new dangers from this.

"Most people are in agreement that there is a slight increase in the potential for harm. But there's an exponential increase in the potential benefit to society," he told BBC's Newsnight.

"The flu vaccine you'll get next year could be developed by these processes," he added.

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Dr Venter created the lifeform by synthesising a DNA code and injecting it into a single bacteria cell. The cell containing the man-made DNA then grew and divided, creating a hitherto unseen lifeform. Kenneth Oye, a social scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., said: 'Right now, we are shooting in the dark as to what the long-term benefits and long-term risks will be.' Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: 'This is a Pandora's box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.'

Scientist accused of playing God after creating artificial life by making designer microbe from scratch - but could it wipe out humanity?

Scientists today lined up to air their fears over a genome pioneer's claims that he has created artificial life in the laboratory.

In a world first, which has alarmed many, maverick biologist and billionaire entrepreneur Craig Venter, built a synthetic cell from scratch.

The creation of the new life form, which has been nicknamed 'Synthia', paves the way for customised bugs that could revolutionise healthcare and fuel production, according to its maker.

But there are fears that the research, detailed in the journal Science, could be abused to create the ultimate biological weapon, or that one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend.

While some hailed the research as 'a defining moment in the history of biology', others attacked it as 'a shot in the dark', with 'unparalleled risks'. The team involved have been accused of 'playing God' and tampering 'with the essence of life'.

Dr Venter created the lifeform by synthesising a DNA code and injecting it into a single bacteria cell. The cell containing the man-made DNA then grew and divided, creating a hitherto unseen lifeform.

Kenneth Oye, a social scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S., said: 'Right now, we are shooting in the dark as to what the long-term benefits and long-term risks will be.'

Pat Mooney, of the ETC group, a technology watchdog with a special interest in synthetic biology, said: 'This is a Pandora's box moment - like the splitting of the atom or the cloning of Dolly the sheep, we will all have to deal with the fall-out from this alarming experiment.'

Dr David King, of the Human Genetics Alert watchdog, said: 'What is really dangerous is these scientists' ambitions for total and unrestrained control over nature, which many people describe as 'playing God'.

'Scientists' understanding of biology falls far short of their technical capabilities. We have learned to our cost the risks that gap brings, for the environment, animal welfare and human health.'

Professor Julian Savulescu, an Oxford University ethicist, said: 'Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny.

'He is not merely copying life artificially or modifying it by genetic engineering. He is going towards the role of God: Creating artificial life that could never have existed.'

He said the creation of the first designer bug was a step towards 'the creation of living beings with capacities and a nature that could never have naturally evolved'. The risks were 'unparalleled',' he added.

And he warned: 'This could be used in the future to make the most powerful bioweapons imaginable. The challenge is to eat the fruit without the worm.'

Dr Venter, who was instrumental in sequencing the human genome, had previously succeeded in transplanting one bug's genome - its entire cache of DNA - into another bacterium, effectively changing its species.

He has taken this one step further, transplanting not a natural genome but a man-made one. To do this, he read the DNA of Mycoplasma mycoides, a bug that infects goats, and recreated it piece by piece.

The fragments were then 'stitched together' and inserted into a bacterium from a different species.

There, it sprang to life, allowing the bug to grow and multiply, producing generations that were entirely artificial.

The transferred DNA contained around 850 genes - a fraction of the 20,000 or so contained in a human's genetic blueprint.


In future, bacterial 'factories' could be set up to manufacture artificial organisms designed for specific tasks such as medicines or producing clean biofuels.

The technology could also be harnessed to create environmentally friendly bugs capable of mopping up carbon dioxide or toxic waste.

Dr Venter, a 63-year-old Vietnam War veteran known for his showman tendencies, said last night: 'We are entering a new era where we're limited mostly by our imaginations.'

But the breakthrough, which took 15 years and £27.7million to achieve, opens an ethical Pandora's box. Ethicists said he is 'creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history' - with unparalleled risks.

Dr Venter, whose team of 20 scientists includes a Nobel laureate, likens the process to booting-up a computer.

Like a program without a hard drive, the DNA doesn't do anything by itself. But, when the software is loaded into the computer - in this case the second bacterium - amazing things are possible, he said.

'WATERMARKING' DNA

This dramatic development naturally raises fears of the dangers these organisms pose. So one idea, which has been followed through by Venter and his team, is to 'watermark' them.

By weaving these hidden codes in it enables scientists to trace the organisms to their laboratories and prove the recipient bacteria contained the synthetic genome.

Researchers used the 'alphabet' of genes and proteins to spell out messages.

The team created a code that spells out the 26 letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9 and several punctuation marks. They then wrote a message which reveals the code. A second missive was a string of 'letters' corresponding to the names of 46 people involved in the project. A third gave an e-mail address where people can write once they crack the code and the fourth listed three philosophical quotes.

Now that the scientist, whose J Craig Venter Institute has labs in California and Maryland, has proved the concept, the path is open for him to alter the 'recipe' to create any sort of organism he chooses.

At the top of his wishlist are bugs capable of producing clean biofuels and of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Other possibilities include designer microbes that can mop up oil slicks or generate huge quantities of drugs, including the flu vaccine.

Any such organisms would be deliberately 'crippled' so that they cannot survive outside the lab, he claimed.

Brushing aside the ethical concerns of his work, Dr Venter wrote in his autobiography that it would allow 'a new creature to enter the world'.

'We have often been asked if this will be a step too far,' he said. 'I always reply that - so far at least - we are only reconstructing a diminished version of what is out there in nature.'

Last night, he claimed the breakthrough had changed his views on the definition of life. 'We have ended up with the first synthetic cell powered and controlled by a synthetic chromosome and made from four bottles of chemicals,' he said.

'It is pretty stunning when you just replace the DNA software in a cell and the cell instantly starts reading that new software and starts making a whole new set of proteins, and within a short while all the characteristics of the first species disappear and a new species emerges.

'That's a pretty important change in how we approach and think about life.'

The process was carried out on one of the simplest types of bacteria, under strict ethical guidelines. The research team insist that they cannot think of a day when the technology could be used to create animals or people from scratch.

Has he created a monster?

By Michael Hanlon, Science Editor

The creation of a living being in a laboratory is one of the staples of science fiction.

Now it is a scientific fact. Yesterday's announcement of the birth of a 'synthetic cell' - made by injecting a bacterium shell with genetic material created from scratch by scientists - raises many questions.

These range from the mundanely practical - how will this be useful? - to the profoundly philosophical - will we have to redefine what life is?

Depending on your viewpoint, it is either a powerful testament to human ingenuity or a terrible example of hubris - and the first step on a very dangerous road.

To understand what this development means, we need to discover who the team behind this innovation is.

It is led by Craig Venter, the world's greatest scientific provocateur, a 63-year-old Utah-born genius, a Vietnam veteran, billionaire, yachtsman, and an explorer. Above all he is a showman.

A master of self-publicity, he does not do things by halves; he led the private team which competed with scores of publicly funded scientists in the U.S. and UK to 'crack' the human genome by sequencing our DNA.

His rapid, innovative approach led to the possibility he would beat the scientific establishment.

So, to save face all round, the human genome was presented as a joint achievement. At around the same time, he began talking about making an artificial lifeform in the lab.

Not a Frankenstein's monster, or even a mouse, but a bacterium, one of the simplest living organisms. His blueprint was to be an unassuming and harmless little germ with only 485 genes (humans have around 25,000).

Venter talks grandly of a supercharged biotech revolution, with synthetic bacteria designed to produce biofuels, to mine precious metals from rocks and industrial waste, to digest oil slicks and render toxic spills harmless.

WHO IS CRAIG VENTER?

Craig Venter is a controversial biologist and entrepreneur who led the effort by the private sector to sequence the human genome.

He was vilified by the scientific community for turning the project into a competitive race but his efforts did mean that the human genome was mapped three years earlier than expected.

Born in 1946, Dr Venter was an average scholar with a keen interest in surfing.

It was while serving in Vietnam and tending to wounded comrades that he was inspired to become a doctor.

During his medical training he excelled in research and was quick to realise the importance of decoding genes. In 1992 he set up the private Institute for Genomic Research. Then a mere three years later he stunned the scientific establishment by revealing the first complete genome of a free-living organism that causes childhood ear infections and meningitis.

In 2005 he founded the private company Synthetic Genomics, with the aim of engineering new life forms the would produce alternative fuels.

He was listed on Time Magazine's 100 list of the most influential people in both 2007 and 2008.

Scientists could even create bacteria which can produce novel drugs and vaccines, or organisms engineered to live on Mars and other planets.

The potential is huge - but so are the dangers. An artificial species, created in the lab, might not 'obey the rules' of the natural world - after all, every living being on Earth has evolved over three billion years, when a myriad of competing species have had to share the same increasingly crowded environment.

It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world's crop plants or even humanity itself.

Synthetic biology also challenges our most cherished notions of what life itself actually is. Non-scientists might not realise that we have, as yet, no proper definition of life.

A diamond is not alive; a baboon clearly is. But what about a virus? Viruses, which are even simpler than bacteria, have a genetic code written in DNA (or its cousin RNA).

The stuff viruses are made from is the stuff of life - protein coats and so on - yet they cannot reproduce independently.

Like diamonds, they can be grown into crystals - and you certainly cannot crystallise baboons. Most biologists say viruses are not alive, and that true biology begins with bacteria.

So is Synthia, Venter's tentative name for his new critter, alive? It is certainly not the result of Darwinian evolution, one of the (many) definitions of life. It is more 'alive' than any virus but it is the product of Man, not of evolution. Its genetic code is simple enough to be stored on a computer (but then again, so is ours).

Whatever the answer to this fundamental question, Venter's breakthrough is certainly the final rebuttal to the old notion of a vital spark - a mysterious essence that divides the quick from the dead. If you can carry around a genome on a computer memory stick and make a cell using a few simple chemicals, then the old idea of 'vitalism' is truly dead.

Of course, this is early days. It is not yet clear if Venter can negotiate the final step - creating a whole cell from scratch, using no bits of existing living organisms at all.

His bacterium is likely to be weak and feeble; we are a long way from synthetic super-plagues, and even further from an artificial animal or plant. But it is hard to escape the feeling that a boundary has been crossed. The problem is, it is far from clear where we go from here.

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