Imagine being able to make new life, with new genomes, in the lab. Imagine being able to program a new synthetic breed of algae to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make hydrocarbon fuel. This is Craig Venter’s job.

They know they’ve really achieved the feat of creating new life, rather than merely identifying a contaminant, because they built the names of scientists and some philosophical quotes right in to the genome.

While scientists and philosophers have already begun to debate the potential consequences and moral implications of the work, the motivating force for Venter is commercial. His team has an even more ambitious dream: to create organisms that are not only new, but also lucrative. Venter has secured a deal with the oil giant ExxonMobil to create algae that can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into fuel — an innovation he believes could be worth more than a trillion dollars.

The new bacterium, Venter said, is “the proof of the concept that we can make, in theory, changes across the entire genome of an organism, that we can add entirely new functions, eliminate those we don’t want, and create a new range of industrial organisms that put all of their effort into doing what we want them to do. Until this experiment worked, the whole field was theoretical. Now it is real.”

Full article with video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-genome

Also see: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5981/958