Meanings of 'life' | Nature

Synthetic biology provides a welcome antidote to chronic vitalism.

Download PDF Synthetic biology provides a welcome antidote to chronic vitalism. Many a technology has at some time or another been deemed an affront to God, but perhaps none invites the accusation as directly as synthetic biology. Only a deity predisposed to cut-and-paste would suffer any serious challenge from genetic engineering as it has been practised in the past. But the efforts to design living organisms from scratch — either with a wholly artificial genome made by DNA synthesis technology or, more ambitiously, by using non-natural, bespoke molecular machinery — really might seem to just

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