Life created in labs

I read this in the paper this morning

From MSNBC.MSN.COM Researchers creating life from scratch

In Israel, scientists have created the world's smallest computer by engineering DNA to carry out mathematical functions. J. Craig Venter, the entrepreneurial scientist who mapped the human genome, announced last month that he intends to string together genes to create from scratch novel organisms that can produce alternative fuels such as hydrogen and ethanol. With a $42.6 million grant that originated at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Berkeley researchers are creating a new malaria drug by removing genetic material of the E. coli bacterium and replacing it with genes from wormwood and yeast. "We're building parts that can be assembled into devices and devices that can be turned into systems," said Jay Keasling, head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Berkeley synthetic biology department, which was created last year. Keasling, who doubles as a chemical engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, hopes to create never-before-seen living molecules by fusing genes from the three species — a new breed of bacteria capable of spitting out malaria-fighting artemisinin, a chemical now found only in small traces in the wormwood plant. Artemisinin has been extracted from finely ground sweet wormwood for more than 2,000 years as a treatment for a variety of ailments, but the method is expensive, time consuming and limited by access to wormwood, which is found mainly in China and Vietnam. Keasling has a similar project in the works to synthetically create a compound now found in Samoan trees, one that shows promise in fighting AIDS. Such efforts are attracting more than grant money.

Uh oh.. I smell ethics troubles!