Regulate Synthetic Life Science While the Horse is Still in the Barn

The media was all atwitter a few weeks ago when scientists announced that they had created synthetic life. Technically, that isn’t true—if by synthetic life one means creating life out of non life. Rather, scientists took a living bacterium, removed its genetic content, and replaced it with a manufactured genome of a different species. The new genome took control of the existing cell and created a new species that acted like its natural counterparts, including cell splitting. Thus, it might be more accurate to say that scientists have successfully mimicked life rather than literally created it. Continue reading at CBC-Network.org