Human jelly babies? Nah, not really but now that I have your attention. The benefits of any synthetic meat or protein products cannot be denied. However, the marketing and PR campaign needed to make inroads into the market would be truly unique and would have to be magnificent.

wildcat2030:

We may not have the appetite for human-derived gelatin but it has its health benefits, says Andrew Marszal . Reports last week that researchers could be just six months away from producing the world’s first artificial meat, using thousands of stem cells bred in a laboratory, sent a wave of fascination around the world. Yet there is an even more ghoulish prospect ahead: the idea of eating artificial food made from humans. This may sound like science fiction, yet a new technique for making gelatin from human DNA is attracting “increasing interest from research and industrial circles”, according to a new study by scientists from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The paper, published recently in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, revealed that successful experiments had been carried out in which human genes were inserted into a strain of yeast to “grow” large amounts of recombinant (genetically engineered) human gelatin. Gelatin has a long history of use as a gelling agent by the food industry – and, according to the journal’s publisher, the American Chemical Society, human-derived gelatin “could become a substitute for some of the 300,000 tons of animal-based gelatin produced annually for desserts, marshmallows, candy and innumerable other products”. (via Do you fancy a jelly baby made from human DNA? - Telegraph)

Synthbio: Craig Venter`s world of printed lifeforms.

emergentfutures:

Craig Venter Imagines a World with Printable Life Forms

Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted.

“It’s a 3-D printer for DNA, a 3-D printer for life,” Venter said here today at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York City.

The geneticist and his team of scientists are already testing out a version of his digital biological converter, or “teleporter.”

Full Story: Wired

(via futuramb)

Synthetic Biology: Artificial life could help in the colonization of Mars.

ikenbot:

Synthetic Life Could Help Colonize Mars, Biologist Says

Many proponents of colonizing Mars have brought forth the interesting method of terraforming. But in it lies other biological feats we must perfect here on Earth before attempting it in other planets. And it looks like biologists have geared to do just that.

Synthetic organisms engineered to use carbon dioxide as a raw material could help humans settle Mars one day, a prominent biologist says:

Man-made, CO2-munching lifeforms are already in the works, geneticist Craig Venter told a crowd here during an event called TEDxNASA@SiliconValley Wednesday night (Aug. 17). Venter and his team, who made headlines last year by creating the world’s first synthetic organism, are trying to design cells that can use atmospheric carbon dioxide to make food, fuel, plastics and other products.

This ability would obviously have huge implications here on Earth, but it could also help make Mars — whose thin atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide — a more livable place, Venter said. “These kinds of processes will allow us to make almost anything needed there from that CO2 environment,” Venter said in a video presentation.>

Synthetic Life

Venter and his team announced in May 2010 that they had created the first living organism with a synthetic genome.

The biologists constructed the genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides from many preassembled units of DNA. Then they transplanted the genome into the cell of a closely related species that had been emptied of its own genome. The “host” bacterium soon began to function and reproduce just as a naturally occurring M. mycoides would.

The feat was more than just a neat trick. It showed that custom-designing organisms to do all sorts of helpful tasks is eminently possible — and may not be that far off. Creating new lifeforms could help “solve some of the fundamental problems of providing sufficient energy, food, clean water and medicines,” Venter said.

Read More

(via scinerds)

scienceyoucanlove:

Synthetic DNA shown to evolve

Scientists from the UK Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology have developed polymerases for artificial DNA, which not only “unzips” the artificial DNA, but manages to transcribe the genetic code to natural DNA, and back again.

This hints that if there is life beyond Earth, it could be bound to evolution if not the same chemistry for life here. It also shows that life may not solely be restricted to DNA or RNA. 

It should be pointed out that this does not represent a full genetics platform (as it’s still dependent on DNA), and that a self replicating system which does not require DNA still needs to be developed.

This research has implications in many fields, including astrobiology, synthetic genetics and the search into the origins of life (DNA/RNA). It is believed that DNA evolved from RNA, but that RNA in turn evolved from a simpler molecule that performed the same function.

futurescope:

The Potential of Synthetic Biology in Space

A lot of proposed synthetic biology applications can seem pretty out there, but some are really out there. NASA is currently advertising open postdoctoral positions in synthetic biology, with particular emphasis on food production in space. Engineered organisms have the potential to do lots of things that would be useful for space colonists, from producing food and fuel to treating wastewater. Because organisms replicate themselves, future astronauts would only have to bring some spores and seeds and empty bioreactors, the organisms would do the rest of the work. […]

[via] [Synthetic Biology @ NASA] [photo credit by Matt Mansell]

(via futurescope)