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January 26, 2008

Weird biology: Scientists create DNA, teenager acquires organ donor's blood type, immune system

Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein, 1931

Weird science: A step closer to creating life out of chemical soup. Los Angeles Times:

Using off-the-shelf chemical compounds, scientists for the first time have constructed the entire genome of a bacterium, a key step toward their ultimate goal of creating synthetic life forms, researchers reported today.

The man-made DNA was nearly identical to the natural version on which it was based -- with minor modifications to identify it and render it harmless to people, according to the study in the journal Science....

...The next step for the researchers is to transplant the artificial DNA into a host bacterium and see if it will take over the cell.

What jumped out at me was the language used by Dr. Hamilton O. Smith, the Nobel Prize-winning biologist who led the research team at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md.: "...It's a matter of time before we have it booted up in a cell."

Frankenstein is perhaps an old-fashioned way to view the outcome of this experiment. He's describing life as an operating system in a biological computer.

The result may, of course, be the same.

Australian girl changes blood group, immune system:

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian teenage girl has become the world's first known transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune system of her organ donor, doctors said on Friday, calling her a "one-in-six-billion miracle."

Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9 years old and her own liver failed.

"It's like my second chance at life," Brennan told local media, recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy grail of transplant surgery. "It's kind of hard to believe."

Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body's immune system.

Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs...

Brennan seems to have acquired a new operating system.

Posted by Sheila Lennon at 8:42 AM | Permalink