title: [From human genome to man-made life: J. Craig Venter leads the life sciences].
abstract: For the first time ever, the scientists of J. Craig Venter team have created actual self-replicating synthetic life. The research was just published in the Journal of Science on May 20, 2010. Although this news immediately brings the worry about the possible potential threat to biosecurity and biosafety as well as the ethical disputes, it yet indicates that mankind have made a new step forward in synthetic biology. In the time of post-genome era, we believe the advancement of synthetic biology that might affect or change the future life of human being will be widely used in energy, environment, materials, medication and many other fields.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Mingwei
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Yin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: George F
authors.initials: GF
authors.lastname: Gao
mesh_terms: D001690:Biological Science Disciplines / Q000379:methods*; D019976:Cloning, Organism; D015894:Genome, Human / Q000235:genetics*; D016045:Human Genome Project; D006801:Humans; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000639:trends*