Re:Too much (Score 1)

There is a major misconception on the actual scientific validity of this experiment. What do we hope to learn? I have several times removed the nucleus from a cell to replace it with the nucleus of another cell...did I create life? This is a common practice in developmental biology for example - its not creating life unless we actually create from an original plan the entire organism. By shaving away the less important genes in an organism and marking these 300 as necessary and sufficient have we really created anything new? In actuality this is only a scientifically valid experiment if it FAILS. Once we have an organism that almost works we can begin to 'debug' it - learning a great deal about what actually makes life. Therefore I wouldn't worry too much about this - the probability of sucess for this project is extremely low (but as I already mentioned this is a good thing). There will not be a mutant form of the bacterium made that will wipe out humankind (remember, Nature is extremely efficient - if a better organism could have existed it would have).