In-Venter-ing artificial life

An interview featuring Dr Craig Venter, along with Professor Paul Freemont of Imperial’s Department of Life Sciences and Professor Dick Kitney of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering

In-Venter-ing artificial life

An interview featuring Dr Craig Venter, along with Professor Paul Freemont of Imperial’s Department of Life Sciences and Professor Dick Kitney of Imperial’s Department of Bioengineering and Head of the Institute for Systems Biology was aired on Channel 4 news on 22nd October).  The piece covered the implications of Dr  Venter’s controversial work on synthetic biology. 


Dr Venter’s team includes two Nobel prize winners who have shown that they can change the species of a bacterium by genome transplantation (see Science 2007 Aug 3:317(5838).  Venter has now built a complete artificial chromosome and plans to implant it in an existing bacterial cell resulting in the creation of the first artificial living organism, which will be called Mycoplasma Laboratorium. Professors Freemont and Kitney discussed how they agree with Venter that synthetic biology such as this could help solve problems like climate change by the creation of alternative fuel sources, and may even produce the third industrial revolution. Click here to watch the interview.