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The Forum > Article Comments > This synthetic life > Comments

This synthetic life : Comments

By Roger Kalla, published 21/6/2007

Biodiversity is changing dramatically: natural selection is being bypassed and man is becoming the Intelligent Designer.

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Having captured the genomes, knowledge will have advanced to the same stage as that reached by the dog that chased a car and caught it.
What the hell is to be done with it next?

Natural biodiversity will have a few tricks up its sleeve no matter how much successful any gene sequencing is done.

The complexity of how aggregations of things work as a whole goes under the moniker of ecology. An "ecological pause" in the undue enthusiasm over successful identification of components might be in order.
Posted by colinsett, Saturday, 23 June 2007 8:28:34 PM
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The wonder of microbes is their awesome diversity and the brilliant ways they have adapted to extreme environmental challenges, usually in simple but effective ways over millions of years.

Some higher organisms have successfully dealt with problems like reconnecting severed spinal nerves. There's much that we can learn from them and hopefully apply our knowledge to agricultural productivity, bio-fuels, and the human genome.

Our genome has many flaws that can be corrected by ethically improving upon the template designed by natural selection. It is entirely possible over the next few decades to improve the health and well-being of people while at the same time dramatically reducing our rocketting health care costs.

Unfortunately we have barely scratched the surface in our understanding of the existence of many of Earth's fascinating lifeforms, let alone their special genes. Our human footprint has seen the alarmingly rapid disappearance of endangered species with weak government policies and enforcement unlikely to slow the trend of mass genocide.

Given the peak oil challenge to human living as we know it, it's surprising that politicians and their advisers have not woken up to the fact that our best natural resources are all around us and under our feet.

Can we hope to ever see a federal budget announced with massively boosted funding for the biological sciences? Let's see what science policies are announced in the up-coming election to assess whre their priorities lie.
Posted by fair go, Monday, 25 June 2007 11:01:30 AM
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