artificial life

(Newser) - It sounds a little Frankenstein-esque, but a prominent US geneticist has created what he calls the first synthetic living cell. Craig Venter built the genome of a bacterium from scratch and implanted it in a cell, a development seen as an important step toward the creation of artificial life, the...

(Newser) - Scientists have assembled the entire genome of a bacterium from basic chemicals, an important step toward creating a fully artificial organism, Reuters reports. "This entire process started with four bottles of chemicals," says Craig Venter, founder of the institute that did the work. Scientists had previously manufactured the...

(Newser) - One popular theory on the origin of life holds that it is a “cosmic imperative”—inevitable on any Earth-like planet. That theory is being tested in a novel way, Scientific American reports: by searching for evidence of a “second genesis”—life on Earth that in some...

(Newser) - A synthetic life form constructed in a lab from basic components could make its debut in the next 3 to 10 years, scientists say. Researchers are hard at work on creating a cell, which hopefully would be able to reproduce on its own. "It's going to be a big...