The creation of the first living organism with artificial DNA not found in nature is astonishing. As far as we know, this new organism has never occurred in the billions of years of evolution on Earth or elsewhere in the universe.
Life on Earth in all its diversity is encoded by only two pairs of DNA bases, A-T and C-G. What has been created by scientists is an organism that stably contains those two pairs plus a third, unnatural pair of bases.
The discovery opens the door to new possibilities, where infinite permutations of bases can be combined to form infinite numbers of complex amino acids and proteins, potentially leading to an infinite number of organisms and creatures.
This further step in genetic modification, complements recent scientific discussion on artificial intelligence, where machines with superhuman intelligence may reach a stage where they can repeatedly improve their design. This could theoretically give rise to the creation of a new species, beyond which the course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable. In fact, it was recently reported that a computer became the first machine to pass the Turing Test by convincing judges that it was human. As Steven Hawking and co wrote, "whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all". These discoveries highlight once again just how little we know.
On a related point, 90 to 99 percent of species ever existing on the planet have already become extinct. The overwhelming majority of species vanish as a result of normal or background extinction due to the limited period of biological species existence, which fluctuates from 1 million years with mammals through to 11 million years with some marine invertebrates. Besides background extinction, fauna has experienced five mass extinctions, as a result of which 50 to 95 percent of then existing species disappeared within a limited historical period.
Perhaps one can take a leaf from the immortal jellyfish, which has the ability to adapt to the environment through transforming itself from an adult to a baby, theoretically meaning that it can live forever.
Life on Earth in all its diversity is encoded by only two pairs of DNA bases, A-T and C-G. What has been created by scientists is an organism that stably contains those two pairs plus a third, unnatural pair of bases.
The discovery opens the door to new possibilities, where infinite permutations of bases can be combined to form infinite numbers of complex amino acids and proteins, potentially leading to an infinite number of organisms and creatures.
This further step in genetic modification, complements recent scientific discussion on artificial intelligence, where machines with superhuman intelligence may reach a stage where they can repeatedly improve their design. This could theoretically give rise to the creation of a new species, beyond which the course of human history is unpredictable or even unfathomable. In fact, it was recently reported that a computer became the first machine to pass the Turing Test by convincing judges that it was human. As Steven Hawking and co wrote, "whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all". These discoveries highlight once again just how little we know.
On a related point, 90 to 99 percent of species ever existing on the planet have already become extinct. The overwhelming majority of species vanish as a result of normal or background extinction due to the limited period of biological species existence, which fluctuates from 1 million years with mammals through to 11 million years with some marine invertebrates. Besides background extinction, fauna has experienced five mass extinctions, as a result of which 50 to 95 percent of then existing species disappeared within a limited historical period.
Perhaps one can take a leaf from the immortal jellyfish, which has the ability to adapt to the environment through transforming itself from an adult to a baby, theoretically meaning that it can live forever.
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