by Neon Vincent
Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment. This week's featured story comes from Reuters. Artificial life? Synthetic genes 'boot up' cell Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Researchers trying to make synthetic life in the lab have "booted up" a hollowed-out bacterium using a human-made genome in a major step toward making synthetic life. They hope to use their stripped-down version of a bacterium to eventually engineer custom-made microbes. "This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer," said genome pioneer Craig Venter, who led the research. More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.
continued at Daily Kos....
