A step to artificial life: Manmade DNA powers cell
Well…not exactly, as noted by Ken Blanchard posting over at SD Politics.

Ms. Neergaard is lucky that bad science writing isn’t a crime; otherwise she would be in shackles by now. The word “enduring” in the first sentence is puerile puffery. The much worse sin against scientific literacy is that DNA doesn’t “power” living cells, nor does it “take over and drive” them. DNA is the fundamental repository of information for most of its operations and for the essential business of reproduction. DNA is a very powerful map, but the cell itself does the driving.

These distortions have clearly been encouraged by Venter, who is both a scientist and an entrepreneur. This is how he sells his science:

“This is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer,” Venter told reporters.

Well, not yet. Venter’s team built the genome of one kind of bacteria from scratch, using fragments of DNA. In doing so, I gather they were plagiarizing the Lord’s work by precisely copying the DNA of the cattle germ. Then they transplanted the artificial genome into a different kind of cell (a goat germ). The new cell was able to function and I gather it has reproduced. But the parent of the new cell is clearly the recipient cell, not the computer.

Go read the rest of KB’s post…it’s well worth it.

By the way, the Chief heartily concurs with KB on this…and you can put 4 quarters with that and get a can of pop!